A short history of a very small company, told as plainly as we can manage.
Marlowe & Tucker began in April 2015 in a kitchen above a paint shop. Antonio Kline, then a former pharmacy technician with a stubborn fondness for plants, started mixing salves on his stovetop for a handful of friends who couldn't find anything mild enough for their kids. By the end of that summer there were standing orders from forty households, a folding table at the Branch Brook farmers' market, and a domain name registered under the year the whole thing started: tucker2015.com.
Mira Halloran joined the following spring after wandering into the market stall on her lunch break and asking too many questions about beeswax. She has run production ever since. In 2018 the operation moved across the river into a single sunlit room on Webster Street, where it has stayed.
It is a phrase that gets used loosely. Here it means a literal upper limit: no formula leaves the studio in lots of more than 220 units. When demand exceeds the batch, we close the order window until the next pour. This is inconvenient — we know — but it is the only way we have found to keep quality consistent and stay honest about who, exactly, is making your bar of soap.
Founder · Formulation
Mixes oils, answers most emails, talks too much about lavender provenance. Lives in the Ironbound with two dogs named after rivers.
Production lead
Runs the pour schedule, labels every jar, and is the reason orders ship on Wednesdays without fail. Studied ceramics in Providence.
Studio dog
Eleven years old. Greets every visitor. Will not move from the doorway when the sun is on the floor between two and four in the afternoon.
Antonio mixes the first batch of Sunday Balm on a stovetop in Belleville and sells out at the Branch Brook farmers' market.
The domain tucker2015.com goes live with a single page and a contact form. Mira joins in May.
The studio relocates to 2305 Webster Street in downtown Newark. Friday open hours begin and have continued without interruption ever since.
We pause retail for ten weeks and donate the entire balm reserve to nurses at University Hospital. The first Quiet Hours tisane is blended.
The Long Library candle is featured in Garden State Quarterly. We hire our first part-time helper, a high-school student named Renata, and she's still with us.
Eleven years in. Three people, one room, around sixty formulas, and no plans to grow much further than that.
We have been asked, more than once, whether we plan to expand — a second location, a wholesale arm, a private-label deal with a department store. The honest answer is no. We like the size of the thing. We like knowing the people who buy from us, and we like being able to answer the phone ourselves when it rings. If you ever want to know who made your jar, just check the bottom — Antonio, Mira, or Renata signed it.
"The room smells like cedar and orange peel and something I can't place. Antonio is at the back grinding something with a mortar. It is, more than anything else, quiet."
— A visitor's note, October 2024