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I love the look of a simple taper candle in a brass candlestick. For years I grabbed every vintage brass candleholder I could find at thrift stores and garage sales in hopes of being the kind of casually elegant person who lights a few too many perfectly mismatched candles for fancy dinner parties and casual weeknight meals. But every time I tried to put candles in the holders, they just wouldn’t stay. They were either too small, and therefore not secure in the candlestick, or too big, which also made them wobbly and prone to falling out if someone were to bump the table or overzealously pass the mashed potatoes.
While it’s true that taper candles and taper candle holders are all roughly the same size, there’s no strict universal diameter for either. And because my fear of accidentally setting my dining room on fire outweighed my desire to be a Taper Candle Person, my candlesticks were indefinitely relegated to a drawer.
Then one day, while using hot tap water to clean a melted votive out of a French yogurt jar, it hit me: I could just warm the bottom of the taper candle to make it malleable enough to mold to the shape of whatever holder I put it in. But I wasn’t patient enough to wait for hot water to do the trick, so I grabbed a lighter, held the bottom of a taper candle directly over the flame (okay, basically in it), then started to rotate the candle. After about 20 to 30 seconds of warming the bottom, I popped the candle into the holder and used enough pressure to force the wax to take the shape of its vessel. After it cooled (a minute or two) my casually elegant table decor was so secure I could hold it upside down without the candle falling out. I’d like to say it was magic, but really, it was fire.
I’ve been using this method for years, and it has yet to fail me. Every once in a while, if I feel like a candle still needs a little reinforcement, I’ll hold the lighter to the base of the candle after it’s in the holder to create a little extra wax footing. I’ve since discovered the existence of products that aim to solve the same problem (candle putty, candle shavers, candle grips, and wax candle adapters), but they’re all unnecessary when you burn your candle at both ends.
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