What hand-poured actually means

Every candle brand says hand-poured. Almost none of them mean it the way we mean it.

In most cases, hand-poured means that a human being was present somewhere in the process. The wax was machine-melted, machine-blended, and poured by a person holding a large industrial jug over a conveyor belt of jars. The human touch is technical, not personal.

Our candles are made in small batches in India by people who have been working with fragrance ingredients for years. The wax is melted in open vessels. The fragrance oils — sourced from the same regional suppliers who have provided Indian perfumers for generations — are added by hand, measured by knowledge as much as by weight.

The pour happens slowly. Too fast and the wax cools unevenly. Too slow and the fragrance separates. It takes experience to know the difference.

The black matte glass jar you hold in your hands was filled by someone who understood what they were filling it with. That is what hand-poured means to us.

We do not think this makes our candles better than machine-made candles. We think it makes them different. There is a particular quality to something made carefully in small numbers. You can feel it when you hold it.

300 candles. Three scents. One launch. That is the size of our first collection.