Our story

It started in my grandmother's garden.

In the countryside of São Paulo, Brazil, my grandmother never went to a store for her skincare. She grew what she needed — calendula, chamomile, arnica, herbs and flowers — and made her own infusions from what the earth gave her, right outside her door. I can still see the jars steeping on her windowsill. No labels she couldn't read. No supply chain. Just the plants, her hands, and knowledge passed down through generations.

As a kid, I didn't think any of it was remarkable. It was simply how things were done. Everything her skin needed was already growing within reach.

Crossing the world to see it

I moved to Los Angeles in 2014. When you arrive in America from Brazil, you come ready to learn — convinced the new place has figured out what home hadn't. So I learned. For years I absorbed everything: the pace, the ambition, the shelves stocked with a product for every problem.

It took me about five years to notice what I'd stopped seeing. Some things, we had right all along. How we hold family close. How we care for our elders. How a community shows up for each other. And how my grandmother never once needed a company to convince her what to put on her skin — the knowledge was already hers, passed down, growing outside her door.

I had to cross the world to understand what I'd left behind. Meanwhile, my own shelves had filled with the modern version: ingredient lists I couldn't pronounce, promising nature on the label while carrying almost none of it in the jar. I've come to believe most of us feel that gap, even when we can't name it — a quiet hunger for what's real. Real food. Real conversation. Real ingredients.

I couldn't fix all of that. But I knew where to start: with one jar, made the way she would have made it.

Carrying her tradition forward

Ancient Nature is that jar. Grass-fed, grass-finished bison tallow — one of the most skin-similar fats found in nature — blended with botanical oils we cold-infuse for a full season, the way she steeped hers. Every batch is rendered and hand-poured in small batches in Los Angeles, in glass and stainless steel, from ingredients I can point to and name.

Most of us can't keep a garden in the middle of a city. This is the next best thing I know how to make: what the earth provides, prepared with patience, sealed in a jar. So you don't need a garden to have what she had.

Come say hello

Most weekends you'll find me at farmers markets around Los Angeles — Redondo Beach, Topanga Canyon, Hermosa Beach, Marina del Rey, Mar Vista. Some of the people I meet there could have anything delivered to their door. They come anyway — because something is different when you buy from the hands that made it.

Come by, put a little balm on the back of your hand, and ask me anything. That's still my favorite way to share this: in person, eye to eye, the way it was passed to me.

And if you can't make it out — start small. One jar. See how your skin feels about the real thing.

— Bruno