Welcome at Brandt! We are a young, artisanal candle studio based in Utrecht. We launched late 2016 after owner Giselle learned the craft of artisanal candle making from a friend in New York. Once she got back home, she missed candle making so much that she decided to launch her own brand.
Here you’ll read everything about our artisanal candle studio. But first, have a look at our video about the craft of hand pouring artisanal candles:
Ode to handmade artisanal candles
Each of the artisanal soy candles we make in our studio has gone through our hands at least 10 times before shipping them out. Yes, almost everything we do is done by hand. For some collections, even the wicks are handmade. Before we start pouring the candles, we attach a wick to the bottom of the inside of the glass. These wicks are all pre-waxed in our soy wax melting pot.
After that, we fill our pouring jugs with liquid soy wax and natural based oils that we mix ourselves. Each scent has its own pouring jug. This keeps the scent stable and prevents it from mixing with other scents. A foolproof way to guarantee that our luxurious scented candles will always smell the same.
Next up is the pouring. We hand pour the candles with great patience in small batches of about 12 candles. And we sure need this patience, because less spilling means a lot less cleaning and polishing. Once the wax has solidified, we clean (if necessary) and label the candles and safely store them until they are shipped as a sustainable gift or great addition to your interior.
Sustainable candle studio in Utrecht
We use soy wax and natural based oils (unfortunately not 100%) and try to be as sustainable as possible every step of the way when making our artisanal candles. We try to do so with keeping to price of the candle in mind. Our sustainable candle studio is based in Utrecht and we deem ourselves very lucky to have such a light and sunny spot. We share our studio with other female entrepreneurs (PerAbuijs and Leonie Vlaar for example) and take up about 35m2 of the space.
We also made sure to decorate the studio with a lot of plants making it almost like a botanical garden. Yes, taking care of our plants also is a big hobby. All our candles are also inspired by nature, even though these plants don’t have a particular scent. It possible to make an appointment to come and smell the soy wax candles in our artisanal candle studio.
Developments in our candle studio
Our candle studio is all about craftsmanship, sustainability and accessibility. We are a proud Dutch candle company! Also, we are always busy developing new collections. Our newest addition to the family, the Nomad Collection, will be dedicated to Europe and will be made from locally sourced rapeseed. We still need to figure some things out to make this come true, but we are working on it and will keep you updated along the way.