The stone lace of old Baku, at the scale of a hand.

At the turn of the twentieth century, oil changed Baku within a few decades, from a fortress town into a metropolis. Those who made their fortunes built as if they meant to stay forever. Many of their houses still stand.

Baku Heritage is devoted to that architecture: the mansions and palaces of the oil boom, and façades where Eastern ornament met European styles, from Gothic to Art Nouveau.

The collection began not with a sketch, but with research. It took six months of work, Elchin Aliyev’s three-volume study of Baku’s façades, and a long selection of buildings, details and historical photographs. No source offered a good image of one detail on the façade of Isa bey Hajinski’s House, so a member of the I’m Honey team went to photograph it in person. The box is made of decisions like that one.

Beneath the lid lies a historical view of Baku in its great building years. The tray holds four small boxes, each dressed in motifs from Baku’s architecture. Each opens into the story of its building, with a jar of honey inside. A hidden compartment holds ten collectible cards, each devoted to one architectural landmark of Azerbaijan. The box is made of Italian design paper, with selected details in gold foil.

The honey will be finished. The box will stay: on a shelf, in an office, in conversations about Baku. It is a gift for anyone who wants to show the city to someone close, a partner or a guest, not on a postcard but in detail.