Since the creation of the Gear—a strikingly bold, cone-shaped design that immediately catches the eye—there’s been a veritable outpouring of fresh takes on candling from Okra Candle. From the most elegant of hand-dipped dinner tapers to the bold beauty of sculpted and moulded forms, it seems the sky’s the limit when it comes to the couple’s ability to reconceptualise their product.

The enterprising couple’s innovative designs are rather remarkable, especially when you consider that candle-making is one of the oldest forms of craft on the planet—its basic technology is at least 5,000 years old, dating back to the simple rushlights used by the ancient Egyptians. Counterintuitively, perhaps it was precisely the fact that neither Erik nor Michelle had any formal training in candle making that has enabled them to work so freely with the possibilities of their chosen medium. They learned on the job, by way of trial, error and experimentation.

“It took us a while to get to know our medium,” says Michelle. She explains that it’s taken time to understand precisely how wick sizing works best, for example, and to develop just the right blends of waxes to use when moulding or dipping candles. “This year we’ve been able to push on a lot further because we really understand it now. Wax is a wonderful medium to work with,” she says. “And when you understand it, you can push its boundaries quite a lot.”

Many of Okra Candle’s designs are made in 3D-printed moulds that enable the creation of candles with a playful variety of twists, turns and unexpected details. And then there’s the brand’s wide-ranging colour palette, which is vibrant and innovative by turns, ranging from lilac and topaz to a spectrum of cool, contemporary greens. Experimentation has been at the heart of Michelle and Erik’s work to date, and this shows in everything they create.

“When we train new people, we explain that wax is a very forgiving medium,” says Michelle. “Obviously, if you have to re-melt a candle you lose some of the mass of the wax, but at least you can re-melt it if something goes wrong, and then you can create something new.”

The public’s response to the duo’s work has been hugely enthusiastic; not entirely a surprise to Michelle and Erik, who had seen the gap in the market that their designs were made to fill. But as Michelle says, “As a business owner, you will always be uncertain about its future success, and we put ourselves completely into the product and into our brand.”

The overwhelmingly positive feedback, and the achievement of rapidly racking up a range of collaborations with fellow South African creatives, have thus been very gratifying. Ideas for new candle designs “come from everywhere,” says Michelle. “I think anything can inspire, from the movement of sand on a dune to the way someone walks down the street or an earring that someone is wearing.”

The Okra Candle aesthetic is sophisticated, yet sports an irreverent, tongue-in-cheek quality that both charms and beguiles. “We do enjoy expressing ourselves,” Michelle says. “Like the Screwed candle, for example. We designed it on a Sunday evening after working all weekend, so we felt absolutely freakin’ screwed. And that’s it, it looks like a screw and we felt screwed. So it was just very fitting.”

From the delightfully witty to the everyday essential—Okra Candle has just expanded into making a range of classic boxed dinner candles—Michelle and Erik seem capable of bringing an almost limitless range of desirable designs into candle form. Combining functionality with charm, their creations are affordable luxuries that add a unique touch to a table or display, and Okra Candle looks set to garner many more admirers in the years to come.

NOW READ

How I’m Making It: Pass It On Founder Michelle Chow on launching an online store focused on sustainability

4 clever lighting designs by architects

5 iconic minimalist landmarks to see in your lifetime