Doc BankmanApothecary
Field Notes · built in publicEN DE
Field Notes · dispatches from the benchNotes 01-02 · updated as it happens
[ Field Notes ]

What is actually happening, dated.

Everything on this page happened. The Doctor does not write here; the letters, the 1887 and the pipe smoke stay on the other pages. This is the workshop: who is building this, what got done, what went wrong, in the first person, with dates.

Six earlier journal entries were removed rather than restyled. Their copy made claims this house does not make. Their subjects are handled properly in the Formulary.

The kit laid out on a hut window sill: bottle, cloth, notebook

Note 01 · The introduction

5 August 2026 · Berlin

My name is Jon Gore. I run this house, which is a grand way of saying I am one person in Berlin making one face oil, slowly, and writing everything down.

The short version of why: I kept buying skincare that spoke to me like a frightened patient, and I kept not using it. The bottles multiplied; the habit never formed. Eventually the suspicion arrived that the shelf was the product. The rest of this site argues that case at length, some of it in costume. This page is where the costume comes off.

What I will write here: decisions as they get made, what they cost, what I got wrong, and where the batch actually stands. What I will not write here: anything the label would not say. If it did not happen, it does not get printed.

If you have ordered: thank you. If you have not, nothing on this page will pressure you to. That is rather the point.

- Jon

An open washbag with the bottle packed among ordinary travel things
Packed. If it does not survive a washbag, it is not a habit.

Note 02 · Where Batch 01 stands

5 August 2026 · Berlin

Written on 5 August, before the first fill, and kept as the record of where things stood. The first parcels went out in October.

The state of things, as a ledger. Done means done; anything not yet real carries a placeholder instead of a plausible sentence.

Done

The formula is locked: nine ingredients, percentages printed on the label and argued for, sheet by sheet, in the Formulary.

Done

Batch 01 is capped at 130 bottles. Each will be numbered by hand at the fill - because the batch is genuinely that small, not because a counter on a website says so.

Done

The shop is open. The site was rebuilt so the whole shop is one page; the old journal came down (see above) and the Formulary went up in its place.

Not yet

The fill. [ Fill window printed here when the bottling date is fixed - not before. ]

Not yet

Dispatch. Orders ship after the seal, in bottle-number order. The wait ledger on the shop page is the same ledger as this one, wearing better clothes.

One decision worth recording: I will not photograph a bottling that has not happened. Until there is a real fill to point a camera at, the process stays as words on this page.

- Jon

Bottles of the current label lined on a shelf, studio frame
Studio frame of the current label. The real 130 will look like this, plus a number.