Oltremare Meaning: The Story Behind Our Name and Logo

What Does “Oltremare” Mean? Beyond the Sea

“Oltremare” is Italian for “beyond the sea.” We picked it because that's exactly what we're doing — bringing what's made on the other side of the sea, in Italy, over to Hong Kong. But the name means a lot more to us than just geography.

“Oltremare” is also the Italian word for ultramarine, the deep blue color. And the story of that color is honestly one of our favorites.

For centuries, the finest blue pigment in the world came from lapis lazuli, a stone mined almost exclusively in a remote part of Afghanistan. To reach European artists, it had to travel an enormous distance by caravan and by sea, through trade routes that ran through Venice. That long journey across the water is exactly where the name comes from — “ultramarine” comes from the Latin ultramarinus, literally “beyond the sea,” because the stone was imported from so far away.

Getting the color itself was just as demanding as getting the stone. Raw lapis lazuli isn't very blue on its own — it's full of other minerals that dull and grey it. Turning it into true ultramarine meant grinding the stone down, mixing it into a dough-like paste with wax, resin, and oil, then kneading and washing that paste in a lye solution to draw the blue particles out. This was done in three separate rounds, and each round produced a different grade of color — the first extraction gave the richest, purest blue, the second a decent but lesser shade, and the third barely a hint of color at all. It's a strikingly similar process to how olive oil is pressed: the first press gives you extra virgin, the highest quality, and each subsequent press gives you something a little more diluted.

That labor is exactly why ultramarine was once worth more than gold, gram for gram. Painters used it sparingly, and only for what mattered most — it's the pigment behind the turban in Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring, applied in careful, expensive layers, and the same blue Renaissance painters reserved almost exclusively for the robes of the Virgin Mary.

We loved this story because it's really our story too: something exceptional, made through real effort, carried across the sea to reach the people who'd appreciate it. That's what our Italian producers do every day, and that's what we're trying to do for them — bringing their authentic, artisanal Italian products to a Hong Kong audience that knows how to appreciate the real thing.

The Droplet: Our Logo's Hidden Meaning

Our logo is a simple droplet outline, in that same ultramarine blue.

It's a drop of the paint itself — a small tribute to where our name and our color actually come from. But it carries a second meaning too: the sweat, and honestly sometimes the tears, behind the work our producers do. Small-batch, artisanal production isn't glamorous. It's early mornings, unpredictable harvests, and manual work that doesn't scale.

It's also, quite simply, a drop of olive oil — our flagship product, and in many ways the purest expression of everything Oltremare stands for.

The Chamois: Our Mascot for Italian Craftsmanship

The chamois is our mascot.

It's a small, incredibly agile goat-antelope that lives high up in the Alps and the Apennines, on terrain most animals couldn't survive on. We picked it because that's exactly how we think of our producers: tough, resourceful, and shaped by generations of tradition, history, and custom, working land that isn't easy.

In our story, the chamois stands at the highest point it can find, looking out beyond the sea — always on the lookout for the best, most genuine Italian products worth sending across the water. It's the one doing the scouting, so that what eventually reaches Hong Kong has already been found, tested, and vouched for.