Product Details

A hand-made piece in dark earthenware clay with poured white slip, hand-painted, finished with a transparent glaze. 

Size: 27cm high x 9.5cm diameter

Please note that this work is a unique, handmade piece. We used a clever device called a ‘candle sharpener’ to get a really good snug fit on dinner candles. And we also used beeswax candles which have some malleability and can be gently twisted to give a tight, secure fit. Please never leave your candles unattended and keep out of drafts. 

THE STORY | Festival of Light by Katrin Moye

A special new collection of hand-thrown and hand-built candle holders, sconces and candelabra by Katrin Moye.

Inspired by her German heritage and traditions, which still play a role in Katrin’s rituals and festivities at this time of year, this collection evokes a northern European and Scandinavian sensibility.

Inspired by the tradition of ‘bringing the outside in’ during the mid-winter months, Katrin’s collection abounds with hand-painted patterns of leaves, berries, garlands and wreaths.

The magnificent pair of St Lucia candelabra heads, with their crown of candles is just extraordinary. From the tactile bulbous hand thrown body to the decorated ‘hair’ which is rendered in tiny leaves, to the crown which can be taken off so the pieces can be also used as a vase. Katrin was inspired by the Swedish St Lucia day Festival, or the Festival of Light; where girls, dressed as St Lucy, form a procession wearing wreaths of lit candles on their heads. 

It’s always a tiny moment of stillness and contemplation when we light a candle and lighting the arched centre-pieces certainly instils a calming moment. 

The hand-thrown candle holders, with their ‘turned form’ have a feeling of 18th century Spitalfields about them, as if sat in a window of a weaver’s house looking down onto Georgian London. A single one on a table is a thing of understated beauty.

“I love making candle holders on the wheel.  It’s a very different way from how I make other shapes such as jugs, plates and vases as it’s almost done backwards.  I throw the outside profile, all the bobbin shapes and nipped in waists, from a solid lump of very carefully centred clay and then carve the flutes into the bases with a wooden tool while the clay is still very wet, straight from throwing.”  

“After several days the clay is dry enough to hold its shape and then I can turn it upside down and carve out the hollow base, in a process called ‘turning’ on the wheel.   Every candle holder comes out slightly differently depending on how my hands respond right at the start when I have a ball of clay on the wheel.”