How it went · Seven years
A hot plate, a spare room, and one stubborn rule.
The rule was never to sell a candle before it had cured. It cost us two Christmases and most of a wholesale account, and it is the only reason anyone reorders.
Forty jars, one hot plate
Ines poured the first batch in a spare room in Sellwood, weighing oils on a kitchen scale. Thirty-one of the forty went to friends. The other nine sold at a Sunday market in November.
The eleven-day rule
A batch shipped after four days' cure and came back cold — no throw, no scent past hour one. We tested every interval to twenty-one days. Eleven was where it stopped improving, and it has been eleven ever since.
Division Street
We took a narrow room with a loading door and a concrete floor that holds 18°C in summer — the reason the cure shelves are here rather than anywhere prettier. The front eight metres became a shop on Thursdays.
Stoneware, and the refill
We stopped buying imported glass and moved to hand-thrown stoneware from a studio four blocks away. Vessels come back to us; a refill is $18 rather than a new jar.
Twelve pours, still 120 at a time
Twelve scents in rotation and a subscription that goes out every eight weeks. Batch size hasn't moved: 120 jars, because that's what two people can pour in a morning and still weigh to 0.1 g.
