Our story
Quill & Clove began the way most good things in our family do: around food.
One side of our family lives in Rajagiriya, Sri Lanka — the island the ancient traders called Serendib, and the only place on earth where true Ceylon cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum) grows the way it has for thousands of years. The other side lives in London, where we grew up watching parcels arrive from home: cinnamon quills wrapped in newspaper, cloves in twists of paper, curry powder roasted the week before. Nothing from a supermarket shelf ever tasted like it.
Eventually we realised something: the spices most people in Britain and beyond have in their cupboards aren't the real thing. Most "cinnamon" sold in the West is cassia — a harder, harsher bark from a different tree entirely. True Ceylon cinnamon is softer, sweeter, and layered like a cigar of paper-thin bark, each quill rolled by hand by peelers whose craft takes years to learn. Once you've tasted the difference, there's no going back.
So we decided to close the distance between our two kitchens — and yours.
Every Quill & Clove order is packed by our family in Sri Lanka, sourced in small batches from growers and peelers we know personally, and sent directly to your door. No container ships, no warehouses, no middlemen blending away the freshness. The hands that pack your parcel are the same ones that cook with these spices every day.
We're a small operation and proud of it. Small enough that we can tell you which garden your cinnamon came from. Small enough that a real person — one of us — reads every message. And small enough that when you buy from Quill & Clove, you're not feeding a corporation; you're supporting a family on a small island with a five-thousand-year habit of growing the world's finest spices.
Welcome to the family table.
— The Quill & Clove family, London & Rajagiriya, Sri Lanka