One person, one bench, sixty candles at a time.

The first hundred candles were bad. The wax sank, the wicks drowned, and a batch of what was supposed to be balsam fir came out smelling like floor cleaner. That is roughly the standard experience of anyone who starts this way, and the only cure is pouring another hundred.

Five years on, the recipe is a soy and coconut blend poured at low temperature, a wooden wick, and a fourteen-day cure that is not negotiable no matter how thin the shelves look. The vessels are thrown by a potter in Fergus. The boxes are made in Cambridge. The fragrance oils are bought from two suppliers, both of whom will tell you exactly what is in them.

What we will not do

We do not use paraffin, dyes, or fragrance oils with phthalates in them. We do not pour a scent we have not burned all the way down ourselves. And we do not describe a candle as "notes of bergamot" when what we mean is that it smells a bit lemony, which is most of what is wrong with how candles get sold.

Where to find us

The studio is open Thursday to Saturday. The rest of the week there is 80 degree wax on the bench and the door stays locked, which is not rudeness so much as insurance. Six independent shops across Ontario carry the range, and the stockists page lists all of them.