Genteel Coffee | San Diego, CA
“From a seed of faith, a garden grows…”
In November 2022, Genteel Coffee celebrated its one year anniversary in their newest space and owner, Justin Esselstrom, commissioned me to create a piece to commemorate the celebration and tell Genteel’s story.
The word Genteel means “refined, elegantly stylish.” It’s a word that was used to describe the upper class of the victorian era. The shop’s logo, a fox, has a historical connotation of being a whimsical trouble-maker. My goal in creating this piece was to depict the convergence of these two themes, and to create a garden that they could equally inhabit. Each of the three flowers depicted represents a different phase of Genteel’s coming-to-be, as well as the over-arching challenges, triumphs, and lessons of each phase.
The orange flower pulls its color from the fox logo and represents Genteel’s humble beginnings as Justin began to serve coffee at a pop-up location in front of the NewSchool of Architecture in San Diego’s East Village. This is when the initial seed, the vision for Genteel, began to crack open and become something more than an idea.
Phase two, the purple flower, was an expansive season that saw Genteel moving into its first brick and mortar space in East Village. This was a time where the shop grew tremendously in its reach and influence, and began to make a name for itself as one of San Diego’s best. Purple has a historic association with royalty, and for this reason, it felt fitting to represent the coffee shop’s arrival into a more refined season.
The final flower, the yellow-green flower, represents the space where Genteel finds itself now. Named one of the best coffee shops in San Diego by Barista Magazine in 2022, Genteel has survived the growing pains of being a start-up, outlasted the covid-19 pandemic, and is thriving in a beautifully designed space full of natural light and friendly faces. The yellow-green coloration of the flower serves to represent the new growth that this shop is and the potential it has yet to see the height of.
