For over 40 years, my father Jorge Ramirez Carreon was a textile engineer in Los Angeles. He had a factory in downtown on 8th Street near Mateo. Nine years ago amid the challenges of doing business in an industry where most manufacturing had relocated to China and India, he sold his shares of the factory and retired. Within two years of his retirement, he was officially diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. We will never know if he continued to work, whether the disease would have overtaken his life. What is known is that in retirement, the father we knew evolved into someone else with minor flickers of the man he always was.

In his lifetime, he took my mother on holiday to 36 different countries, making good on the promise to show her the world. That need to explore the world and capture it in pictures was instilled in his youngest son. As an homage to my father, I’ve formed the company Mateo & 8th, named for the intersection where he spent the bulk of his life in the US.

Our designs are artistic renderings of personal photographs taken around the world. At first glance, they appear like beautiful abstract prints, however upon closer inspection, you can see the humanity mirrored throughout the images.

The pillows are sort of an interpretation of the mind of someone with Alzheimer’s, that amid the confusion and repetition there is a certain truth and a specific memory that resides. The pillows tell a story. A thread in the story of your life.