Frequently asked questions

The script on our icons is usually Syriac, the language close to the Aramaic that Christ himself would have spoken, and still used in the liturgy of our tradition today. What’s written is typically the name of the figure shown, or a short title of honor.

Our icons depict the figures central to the Christian faith: Christ himself, the Virgin Mary, and the saints and martyrs whose lives have been remembered and honored in Church tradition. Some are well known across the whole Christian world, others are closer to home, tied to the history of the Oriental churches specifically. Each one was a real person, and their icons is a way of keeping their memory close at hand.

Our iconography grew up alongside the early Greek tradition, sharing much of the same visual language in its earliest centuries. Under Ottoman rule that development slowed almost to a stop. What’s made today draws heavily again on that Greek heritage, but it now carries something more — an influence from Coptic iconography as well, picked up through centuries of contact and shared faith with the Egyptian church. The result is familiar, yet its own thing.

Oriental Orthodoxy is one of the oldest branches of Christianity, tracing its roots to some of the earliest churches founded by the apostles in the former Roman Empire. Its largest practicing communities today are found in Egypt, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Armenia, Syria, India, and parts of modern-day Turkey. Since the fifth century, the Oriental Orthodox churches have followed their own historical path and developed distinct traditions. At the same time, we remain close in faith and practice to the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. Like them, we maintain apostolic succession, celebrate sacraments rooted in the earliest life of the Church, and preserve an ancient liturgical tradition. Across the centuries, these foundations have remained largely unchanged, even as many Oriental Orthodox communities lived through periods of persecution, displacement, and hardship.

Syriac Christianity is among the oldest in the world, rooted in the lands where the faith first spread beyond Jerusalem, and it has safeguarded a rich tradition of theology and iconography ever since. Its iconography shares a great deal with the wider Orthodox Christian world, including clear Byzantine influences, while retaining some subtle Syriac characters of its own.

Antioch in Focus is an independent shop, not a church body: we draw on this tradition and design icons in its visual language, but we do not represent the Syriac Orthodox Church or any other church, and we are not authorised by one.

Tur Abdin is a hill region in the southeast of modern-day Turkey, and for centuries it has been the heartland of Syriac Christianity. Its monasteries — some, like Saint Gabriel’s, dating back to the 4th century — are among the oldest continuously active in the world. Villages there kept the faith, the language and the old ways of worship alive through Ottoman rule, through the massacres of 1915 known as Sayfo, when much of the Christian population was killed or driven out, and through the waves of emigration that followed, as families scattered to Europe and beyond in search of safety.

What’s left is smaller than it once was, but it has never gone silent. Monks still keep the hours of prayer there, and families still return, if only to remember where they come from.

Incense has been part of Christian worship since its earliest days, burned in churches as prayers are offered, a visible sign of something rising upward that we can’t otherwise see. In our tradition it fills the liturgy — the smoke, the scent, the quiet ritual of it, tied to centuries of prayer before us. The incense represents the prayers of the saints in front of the throne of God.

We make and sell incense because it’s part of how we grew up praying, and we wanted to share that: not just the scent, but a small piece of the tradition it comes from.

The icons are designed by the shop owners and manufactured in China. The incense is sourced within the EU and repackaged under the shop’s own brand in Sweden.