One of our fundamental principles at Wax Atelier is to act as an advocate for candle making cultures and traditions across the world.
This week our co-founder Lola Lely was in Mexico to visit Casa Viviana, a candle-making workshop in Teotitlan del Valle in Oaxaca state.
Casa Viviana is the workplace and home of a family of Zapotec origin, who have been making beeswax candles for four generations. Their elaborate candles, up to a metre high, are used in an ancestral custom of “asking for a hand” when a couple in the community are getting married.
Doña Viviana Alávez, 75 years old, and head of the family, learnt the trade of making candles with beeswax as a child from her grandmother, in the form of birds, fruits and simple flowers, representing life and the universe in Zapotec culture.
Over the generations the family made these candles purely as an ancestral service to the church in exchange for food.
Doña Viviana changed this.
Through her source of inspiration - the rose - she created an original process of taking apart the flower and putting it back together in wax. Over time this beautiful innovation not only transformed the candle making tradition in Teotitlán del Valle, giving it national prominence, but also improved the standing of her family, and her own agency to express her personal art.
Dona Viviana remains an active artisan, and is now passing on this original creative process to Bibiana, who learns from and helps her Grandmother as she hand pours the candles to form the wax roses.
How are these candles made?
The whole process is handmade. The candles are worked in a water bath, which consists of giving wax baths to the wicks, through a gourd, layer by layer until the proper thickness and size are achieved.
To make the flowers, individual wooden and clay moulds are used, some of which date back to Dona Viviana’s grandmother. These are then removed piece by piece for each candle.
The wax itself is naturally coloured with pigments such as indigo or cochineal in vibrant shades of greens, reds and blues creating truly striking individual floral arrangements.
Today, to acquire simple white or multi-coloured floral candles the people go directly to the house of Doña Viviana in Teotitlan del Valle, who is now a respected figure in the Zapotec and wider artistic community, noted as much as for preserving this unique craft, as well as her lasting innovative influence.
