The pouring room, Chandler’s Close

The atelier

Behind the shop is a long, narrow room with two melting tanks, a pouring bench and racks for curing. Everything we sell is made in it, forty-eight candles at a time.

Batch: 48 candles per pour
Cure: 14 days before sale
Testing: 12 four-hour burns per wick size
Kiln: 1,240 °C stoneware firing

A freshly poured candle in charcoal stoneware, the wax still liquid, the wick held straight by a wooden bar across the rim; two empty vessels wait behind it. — Step four: poured at 68 °C, the wick held straight while it sets.

Seven steps, the same every time

01

Blend the wax

British rapeseed wax and Perthshire beeswax are weighed out 70/30 and melted together to 80 °C. The beeswax gives a harder surface and a longer, steadier burn; the rapeseed carries the scent.
02

Add the fragrance

At 82 °C the fragrance goes in, at 8.5–10% of the wax weight depending on the candle, and is stirred for two full minutes so it binds evenly.
03

Set the wicks

Each flat-braided cotton wick is fixed to the base of its vessel with a steel sustainer tab and held upright by a wooden bar across the rim. The three-wick candle has its wicks set in a triangle.
04

Pour

At 68 °C we pour, forty-eight vessels to a batch, in two passes: most of the wax first, then a thin top-up once it has shrunk, so the surface sets flat.
05

Cure for fourteen days

Scent keeps developing in the wax for about two weeks. Every batch rests on the racks for fourteen days before it’s labelled.
06

Burn-test the batch

One candle from every batch burns in the testing room in four-hour sessions, and we log the melt pool, the flame height and any soot. If it fails, the batch doesn’t ship.
07

Label and pack by hand

Labels are letterpress-printed on uncoated cotton paper in Edinburgh. Candles are packed in recycled-pulp inserts with paper tape. There’s no plastic anywhere in the box.

Materials

Wax: 70% British rapeseed wax, 30% Perthshire beeswax. Undyed. The natural ivory colour varies a little from batch to batch.
Wick: Flat-braided unbleached cotton with a steel sustainer tab. Three sizes: one for 220 g, one for 400 g, and a smaller size used three at a time in the 900 g vessel.
Vessel: Slip-cast stoneware from Stoke-on-Trent, fired to 1,240 °C. Glazed inside and out except for the raw foot ring, in slate, haar, heather and peat.
Fragrance: Composed with an independent perfumer in London from a mix of essential oils, absolutes and aroma materials. Compliant with the IFRA 51st Amendment standards for candles.
Burn time: About 50 hours for 220 g, 80 hours for 400 g and 100 hours for the 900 g three-wick, measured in four-hour burns to 1 cm of wax remaining.