The Everything® Candlemaking Book by M.J. Abadie

Author:M.J. Abadie [Abadie, M.J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781440522314
Publisher: Adams Media
Published: 2002-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

The simple process of building up wax in layers on a wick creates the lovely tapered shape—without any effort on the part of the candlemaker! However, you can manually effect the dipped candle’s shape while the candle is still warm. (We’ll discuss that in detail later.)

From Labor to Love

At today’s popular Renaissance Fairs, candle dipping is a big attraction, as it is at the town of Colonial Williamsburg. There, you can watch—and it’s fascinating to see—the women methodically dipping racks of wicks that will become tapered candles. If you visit Williamsburg, you’ll learn that Colonial women dipped candles as part of their domestic work. Every Colonial home was the producer of all things needful to life, including candles. Candlemaking was not a hobby then—it was a labor assigned to the housewife. And a backbreaking, smelly, greasy task it was. Yes, today candlemaking can be fun—and a rewarding hobby. But back then it was pure work, and lots of it.

For a long time, candles were made only of animal fat, and housewives collected every scrap after butchering and cooking of meats was completed. These precious fats were hoarded carefully, protected in covered crocks. At candlemaking time, the fat was melted down and the dipping process began.

Fortunately for early American women with the wherewithal to get them, there were other candlemaking materials available to them, besides ones available in Europe. New England gave them bayberries, which have a heavenly scent—quite a change from the stinky animal-fat candles. Bayberries were introduced to the Colonial women by their Native American neighbors, who also showed them how to get the wax out of the berries.

As you realize by now, another source of candle wax was beeswax, and many farm families raised bees, primarily for their honey and their pollination work, but also to get the sweet-smelling beeswax. Lucky was the Colonial farmer with a hive or two of bees! (Always think twice before you swat a bee—they are beneficial insects!)

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