Blue Candles
A blue candle usually gets bought for one particular spot — a bathroom shelf, a desk, a table where the plates and the cloth already lean cool. Blue runs through every candle here, sometimes on its own and sometimes with a second colour beside it: Blue-Green on one relief pillar, Icy Blue on another, Yellow-Blue and Red-Blue on the tall cones.
The shapes vary more than the colour does: round pillars, pyramid candles, small boats carrying a single letter, wide round candles that come with a stand, and sets that bring several heights together. Scents go from Citronella and Mint through Wild strawberry and Gin & tonic to Vanilla, Lavender and Black lily, so the choice is rarely only about how it looks on the shelf.
We make them by hand in Královské Poříčí — our own workshop, not a warehouse someone else fills for us. The chakra pillars in the MINI sets stand 7 cm and burn 8-15 hours; other pieces here run a good deal longer than that. Height on its own will not tell you which is which, so it pays to read the figures next to each candle rather than judge by the photograph.
Which one to take, and what to do at the first lighting
Start with the spot, not with the candle. On a dining table the low, wide ones keep the sightline open — the Mandala Candle Love with Stand measures 14 cm across and burns 6-13 hours. On a shelf or a window ledge, height earns its keep: Tall Cone Candle Yellow-Blue and Tall Cone Candle Red-Blue reach 43 cm with a width of 7.5 cm, weigh 0.7 Kg and burn 127-170 hours.
Two candles of the same height can part ways completely. At 12 cm, Tall Pillar Candle Citronella measures 3.5 cm across, weighs 0.13 Kg and burns 18-24 hours; Medium Pillar Candle Wild Strawberry stands at the same 12 cm, weighs 0.2 Kg and burns 27-36 hours. The relief pillars meet at 16 cm and still differ — MARIE Icy Blue is 4 cm across at 0.27 Kg and 28-39 hours, LESUPAN Blue is 9x5 cm at 0.35 Kg and 29-39 hours. The pillars, pyramids and cones here are made from a paraffin wax blend.
- A gift with weight in the hand: Bakus Abundance Candle Blue with Golden Shine — 22 cm, 8 cm across, 0.8 Kg, 72-96 hours.
- A whole table dressed at once: Candle Collection RECESE, heights 8.5 + 9 + 16 + 22 cm, 1.7 Kg, 168-220 hours.
- A name or an initial: the BOAT candles with the letters P, O and N, 9 cm tall, 0.17 Kg, 5-12 hours.
- Something shaped rather than round: Pyramid Candle Pentagon 4 and Pentagon 7, 11 cm tall, 0.15 Kg, 17-30 hours.
Shorten the wick before you strike the match. Put it on a flat base that will not catch, out of any draught. The first burn matters most: let it run until the melted top reaches the rim, because a candle stopped short of that goes on sinking in a narrow shaft. And nothing lit stays in a room on its own, or within reach of children and animals.