Gold Candles
Christmas dinner, a name day, a table set out for guests: gold on a candle usually has an occasion behind it. It is on every one of these, and never alone — each has another colour alongside it, green, brown, red or blue, and the name tells you which. Candle Bells – red with golden accent does a different job on a Christmas table than Bakus Abundance Candle Blue with Golden Shine does on a sideboard.
There are the bells, and then the taller Bakus candles, Celebration and Abundance. We make them in Královské Poříčí, and the wax in each is a paraffin wax blend. We have been making candles since 2004. All of them carry a scent, so colour is not the only thing to weigh up. The bells go where room is tight. The Bakus candles do not.
The hours are nowhere near each other here, and they climb with the size: the taller and wider the candle, the longer it burns. So settle that before the look. A candle for one dinner and a candle you light again across many evenings are different buys, and while the gold reads much the same on all of them, the time on the table does not.
Height, hours and where each one will stand
The bells are the small end of this. Green, brown and red with golden accent all stand 13.5 cm on 5.5 cm across, weigh 0.27 Kg and are rated 25-30 hours; nothing here is shorter and nothing lighter. That size fits a laid table or a windowsill without you rearranging anything around it. The green one carries Cucumber freshness, the brown one Choco-coffee — coffee and dark chocolate.
Bakus Celebration Candle Green with Golden Effect and Bakus Celebration Candle Brown with Golden Effect go to 18 cm with 6 cm across, 0.3 Kg and 39-59 hours. Cucumber freshness turns up on the green one here as well. That rating spans a lot of ground, so if you are timing an evening around one, work with its lower end.
Bakus Abundance Candle Blue with Golden Shine and Bakus Abundance Candle Red with Golden Effect are another matter: 22 cm, 8 cm across, 0.8 Kg, 72-96 hours. No other candle here reaches that height or that weight. That width belongs in the centre of a surface, not at the rim of a dinner setting, and at 22 cm the flame sits in the eyeline of anyone seated. Bakus Abundance Candle Red with Golden Effect is the Wild strawberry one: wild strawberries, raspberries, forest moss. Euphoria and Black lily are in among these too — flowers, ripe fruit and amber in the first, flowers and wood in the second.
Trim the wick before the match, the first lighting included. Keep a new one going until the wax has melted across the whole top; stop it sooner and later burns will only hollow out a narrow channel. Put something flat and heat-proof underneath. A draught does one of these no favours, so pick a spot where the air stands still. Walk out of the room and the flame should be out before you do. Children and pets reach further than you think, so keep a lit one well clear of them.