Making Stuff: Candles and Candlesticks
Tapered Candles in Process
One great pleasure for me is dressing tables, as in when one sets the table. I don’t know where this interest in setting a beautiful dining table comes from, perhaps it has to do with my upbringing and the fact that I’m the daughter of a Country Club manager and the dining room tables at the Club were always so elaborately set? That would make sense as I was around that atmosphere for all my childhood, teens and early twenties. For me, a beautifully set table includes placemats, dishware, flatware, water and wine glasses, cloth napkins, napkin rings to hold said cloth napkins, a center piece of some kind, fresh flowers or if it is coming into the holiday season something relating to the specific holiday and candles.
Since candles play an important role in a properly dressed table, I thought they would be a good item to have for sale at Palisade Posh. Therefore, I will be experimenting with making different kinds of candle sticks and learning how to make my own candles.
In this regard, I’ve been fortunate to have wonderful neighbors, Ken, and Jane Fox, who graciously gave me and my family a lesson in the art of candle making this past winter. It turns out they have been making tapered candles since the 1970’s.
Anyway, they’ve been making candles every year for quite some time! It was a fascinating process that starts with the melting of wax which has stearic acid added to it. While that is taking place Ken sets up an elaborate assembly line complete with two rows of rope that have wicks hanging from them via paper clips. The wicks are knotted so they can easily stay attached to the paper clip. The wicks are a little over 12 inches in length and cut to make a 12-inch tapered candle.
Once the wax has melted, the dipping process begins, and it really is like an assembly line. With each dip the wax adheres first to the wick and then slowly starts to build up on the wax itself with each pass through the diameter of the candle begins to grow. After several hours we have easily 50 candles made, if not more! It was an incredible experience and one I hope to do again. My goal is to learn how to make tapered candles with Bees’ wax as I like the connectivity with nature, and it just feels like that is what I should offer at Palisade Posh. For Christmas this past year, Andy gave me this great book “The Candlemaker’s Companion: A Complete Guide to Rolling, Pouring, Dipping and Decorating Your Own Candles”, by Betty Oppenheimer. Unfortunately, I’ve not had any time to read it! One more thing to add to the always growing ‘to-do’ list. But one thing at a time, right now my energies are directed toward making candle sticks.
The first experiment takes its inspiration from a pair of antlers I was fortunate enough to come by this spring while in Palisade. Much to my surprise, removing antlers from what I believe was a discarded taxidermy deer head is quite hard. Antlers are bones and I discovered sawing through bone is no easy task.
Sawing Antlers
From there I designed, and hand built in clay the piece that will hold the candle in place. My idea is that once they are glazed and fired, I will drill a hole in the antlers (hopefully drilling will be easier than sawing) and epoxy them together and thus have a pair of unique one of a kind Antler candle stick! That is the plan anyway… currently it is still a work in progress. I didn’t like the first glaze I chose so it was back to the drawing board with another iteration… this second go round I’m hoping will be the one. For take number two, I used a cone 10 black satin glaze. This was what I had originally planned to use but then changed my mind at the last minute… bad decision on my part. My hope is that the Black Satin will go well with the brown and cream color of the bone which will in turn look nice with a white tapered candle. That is the vision anyway, we will just have to wait and see how it all comes together. In the meantime, I’ve been sketching up other candle stick ideas that I will start working on while also perfecting my Orchid pots. I try to have a few projects going at the same time, which now that I think of it could explain why I’ve not had time to read the candle making book! All in good time or as my ceramic instructor always says “poco a Poco” which in English means, little by little.
