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How would you like coffee with reminder of death?
It sounds strange at first, but at Myth Café in Makati, death is business as usual: In addition to offering Filipino-forward drinks, the café doubles as a vase showroom for the creations of Samsara Design, founded by friends Camille Ayala and Eber C (no relation to the conglomerate families).
The two women sat together during a meeting on October 25. businessworld More than a cup of their hot chocolate (P260, made with Davao cocoa). tableiaServed with burnt marshmallows). Ms Ayala appeared in a black lace dress, bells on her jewelery announcing her arrival. Ms. Sy wore a black T-shirt over white pants and simple sandals.
Myth opened in June this year, but Kalash's business took off in 2020 – a year of death, just like the sadness of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ms Say says she had planned to open a business related to the death industry (caskets) since 2019, but decided to scale back. The rush of necessary cremations and funerals of remains during the pandemic gave them a bittersweet start.
Ms. Sy frequented funeral homes during her childhood due to deaths in the family. This led to a fascination with death rituals (if you meet her she is quite cheerful) and their expense.
“Funeral homes here in the Philippines, we just follow America's death rituals,” he said.
Based on his own observations and some of his studies, including the book American way of death By Jessica Mitford (a British aristocrat turned communist who used the book to criticize the expense of funerals; where grief is exploited for profit), Ms. Cy concluded, “nakaka-konsensya (It shocked my conscience).” From his early plans to open a new type of funeral home (somewhat less somber, according to his recollections), he tried his hand at designing coffins, then switched to cremation urns as part of his ethical decisions. “This is the lesser evil,” he said, citing his concerns about the environmental impacts of embalming fluids and the use of land for burials.
When the women started the vase business, they had two lines: the flagship Samasara vases (P20,000 to P45,000), designed by them and manufactured in the Philippines; and Sara, a less expensive series of vases imported from India (P9,000 to P15,000). Sara was in response to the hyperinflation of funeral expenses during the pandemic. Ms. Sy recalls that funeral homes used to sell urns of the most basic design for P60,000, while their imported urns could be sold for P10,000 with a profit.
“We will get messages from funeral homes,” Ms. Ayala said. nasisira dau Business Blue (We are ruining their business).” Ms Sy said she had to change her name on Facebook because she was being harassed by funeral homes during mass death events.
Ms Tsai discussed the challenges she faced in an industry governed by tradition, heritage, name recall and age: “People don't know they have a choice,” she said, citing her experiences.
Meanwhile, Ms. Ayala showed us some Samsara vases: one of which is shaped like a marble bomb; Again one with an attractive asymmetrical lid. Another has a lid with a pointed object (either a nail, or a sword; up to interpretation), but the most striking is an urn made of limestone with grooves carved into it. The grooves fit the fingers, almost as if holding a loved one again.
The urns use local materials, such as wood, nacreous shell, or rattan – one way this is celebrating Filipino craftsmanship from the cradle to the grave (urns). Ms. Ayala also noted that everything at the café is made from local ingredients. Their beans come from Atok, Benguet, while the salt used for the excellent Artisanal Sea Salt Cream Latte (P240) comes from Pangasinan, Guimaras, and Zambales.
“We have an abundance of beautiful things that we use as home decor. The way we look at urns, we look at them as someone's final home. It's more than just a container of ashes. It's someone's final resting place,” she said.
Sure, it's essentially a heavy vase, but Ms. Ayala walked us through the design considerations. A cremated individual weighed approximately 200 pounds. This will yield about two to three kilograms of ashes – each urn should have about 200 cubic inches to fit it all.
Coffee and Coffin (Type)
The women recall that it took them an entire year to find a space for the showroom. The landlords refused them because they first thought it would involve dead bodies. When told that the urns would be empty, they were told that the business could invite bad luck into the building (they are located above a dive shop). Besides, “It's not like we can invite people inside an urn showroom, and change their perspective about death,” Ms. Ayala said.
“We thought of something that was more familiar, more welcoming and more acceptable,” he said.
The name Samsara comes from the Hindu belief of the cycle of death and rebirth — “What they want to do is escape that cycle,” Ms. Ayala said. “What we want to do with our brand is promote death positivity.”
“Right now, we are playing a slow game,” says Ms Say. “We introduce the youth to the café. In a way, the café also introduces us to our Kalash.”
The cyclical nature of the world is reflected in the café's design: the sails (signifying travel to the afterlife) are arranged in concentric circles. bulul Parents stand in the few places inside the café, as there are almost no corners: so there is an air of softness and warmth all around. Ms. Ayala said she wanted the space to look like a pilgrimage site or a temple: a place of peace. As for the café's name, it comes from how his friends did not believe he combined the two businesses together (thus it becoming a “myth”).
Needless to say, they didn't face criticism: Comments on social media mocked their use of ashes as part of their recipes or that it was all part of a gimmick, but to them, what was important was an unhappy customer who was shopping for a loved one's urn and saying, “billy nga rin ako ng Coffee (maybe I should get coffee),” thus making that one customer's day a little better.
They have recently hosted events such as a botanical sculpture workshop called “We Too Shall Wither” and a Halloween film screening and portrait session. All these programs are under one umbrella theme: memento mori (Latin for “remember you will die.”)
“It's part of life. It's accepting nature: being born, and then, later, dying,” Ms. Ayala said.
Again on the urns, we mention that she calls them one's last home. They should be beautiful, she says, because “this is what your relatives see when they come to visit you. It's good if what they see is something that will remind them of you.”
myth is on 4th Floor of BABS Building, 9304 Camagong St., Makati. It is open from 10 am to 8 pm except Tuesdays and Wednesdays, when they open at noon. , Joseph L. Garcia
