About Brasswick

We started with one scent
we could not buy.

Three candle vessels, a brass pouring jug and a stack of brass lids on a timber workbench

Brasswick started in a garage in 2019, with a second hand melter and a stubborn idea about one scent. We wanted something that smelled like the hour after the sun goes down in summer, when the heat is still in the bricks. Warm, a bit smoky, not sweet. We could not find it, so we spent a year getting it wrong.

That scent is Half Light. It took forty one pours to settle on, and it is still about seventy per cent of what leaves here.

We would rather make five scents that people finish than thirty that sit on a shelf looking decorative.

There are five now. Each one took months, and two more were binned along the way because they smelled like something you would find in a hotel. The rest of the range exists because people asked for it. The diffusers came from customers who could not have a flame at work. The snuffer came from a woman in Hobart who told us, at some length, that blowing a candle out is a crime against the room.

Everything is poured here in small runs. We are four people, one of whom is very good at labels, and we would like to stay about this size.

How we pour

Eighty at a time.

One

Melt and blend

Soy wax to 75 degrees, fragrance folded in at 60, stirred for two minutes by the clock. Hotter or faster and the scent sits on top instead of through it.

Two

Pour and rest

Eighty vessels a run, poured in one pass so the batch is identical. Then two days on the rack, untouched, so the surface sets level and the wax pulls away from nothing.

Three

Trim, lid, label

Wicks cut to five millimetres, lids on by hand, labels set by eye against a jig. One in every run gets burned all the way down so we know the number on the box is real.

The candle seen from directly above, a smooth wax pool with a single lit wick, the brass lid resting on linen beside it

Burn it properly

Four things, and
it will behave.

None of this is precious. It is the difference between sixty hours and forty, and between a clean glass and a black one.

1The first burn sets the memory. Leave it lit until the wax reaches the glass, about three hours.

2Trim the wicks to five millimetres every time, once the wax has set hard.

3Four hours is the longest single burn. After that the vessel gets hotter than it should.

4Stop at ten millimetres of wax. Wash the glass in hot water and keep it for pens.

See the range

Five scents, the odd letter.

New pours, the seasonal run and the occasional note about what we got wrong. Two or three emails a year, no more.