Collection: Candles

Three approaches to the same simple object.

Côté Bougie's candles start as raffia, hand-crocheted in Morocco - traditionally by women working in cooperatives - and fitted over a recycled-glass vessel holding soy wax and a fragrance composed in Grasse. The lattice is left open and undyed, so the glass shows through; a small leather tag is stitched into the seam of every piece.

La Soufflerie mouth-blows its Porta Candele in Paris, one piece at a time, from recycled glass and broken bottles folded back into the furnace - which is where the soft, muted colour comes from. No two are quite the same; the asymmetry and the occasional trapped bubble are what a hand-blown piece looks like when nothing has smoothed it out afterward.

At the plainer end, pairs of dinner candles are hand-poured into loose stripes or dipped blocks of vegetable wax, in colours - pillar box red, racing green, sweetheart pink - and names - Rhubarb, Marmalade, Bramble, Potting Shed - that read like an English kitchen garden in December.

Raffia, hand-blown glass, striped wax: three different processes, and not one of them mechanised.