At the desk
Questions, answered plainly.
What the Pours line means, what is in the wax, and how to look after a candle once it is yours.
Questions
Every candle carries a line that begins with the word Pours. It names the scent that is actually in the wax, in plain English, with no perfume vocabulary. The name sets the scene, and the Pours line tells you what you are actually getting.
The three After Dark candles are poured in coconut apricot wax in an amber glass jar with a gold lid. The three Open Hours candles are poured in soy wax in a clear glass jar with a white lid. Every one has a cotton wick.
They are poured to order in the USA. Nothing sits in a warehouse waiting for an order to find it. Your candle is made after you ask for it, and that is why we say allow about two weeks.
Allow about two weeks from the day you order. Poured to order means the wax is melted, scented and set after your order lands, and then it has to cure before it can be boxed. We would rather say two weeks and mean it.
Shipping is added at checkout at the maker's rate, to a US address. An After Dark candle is $9.19 to ship and each extra one from that shelf adds $3.99. An Open Hours candle is $8.29 and each extra one from that shelf adds $3.49. The two shelves are poured by two different makers, so an order with both shelves in it arrives as two parcels.
Not yet. Checkout takes US addresses only.
You can cancel any time before your candle goes to be poured, which is usually the same day. Reply to your order email and we will refund it in full. Every candle is poured after you order it, so we can't take returns or exchanges — there's no shelf to put it back on. But if yours arrives broken, wrong, or not as this page described, message us and we'll make it right with a replacement or your money back. Ask us anything before you buy — we answer.
Any three candles of your choosing for sixty-nine dollars. Pick them on the Library Card page. Shipping is added at checkout, and if your three come from both shelves they arrive as two parcels, because the two shelves are poured by two different makers.
Three of the candles have a book: Dracula reads by Midnight Study, The Picture of Dorian Gray by The Lamplit Shelf, Frankenstein by The Reading Chair. Those are our suggestions, but the postage rule is simpler than that: buy any candle together with any book and you pay one shipping charge instead of two; the discount shows at checkout. The candle comes from the candle maker and the book from the printer, so they arrive as two parcels.
Six, on two shelves. After Dark holds the three low-lamp candles and Open Hours holds the three warm ones.
A short story, chosen for the candle, set by us as a small book you read on your phone or print out. Every candle comes with its own: Midnight Study has The Mezzotint by M. R. James, The Lamplit Shelf has The Tractate Middoth, The Reading Chair has The Room in the Tower, The Fireside Chapter has The Signal-Man, The Herbarium has The Flowering of the Strange Orchid, and The Morning Reading Room has A White Heron. Ghost stories, mostly, from the years when the ghost story was at its best, each one picked because it belongs to that hour. The link comes in your order email, and the first one is yours the moment you leave your address at the desk.
Looking after a candle
The first time you light a candle, leave it burning until the melted wax reaches the edge of the glass all the way round. Wax has a memory, and it will keep burning to whatever ring you give it on that first evening.
Trim the wick back to about a quarter of an inch before every burn. A long wick gives you a tall, restless flame and a jar that empties itself in a fortnight. A short wick burns clean and slow.
Keep a burning candle where you can see it, away from anything that can catch, and out of reach of children and pets. Stop burning it when about half an inch of wax is left.