DESIGN SCENTS
Candles, oil burners add coziness as weather cools
Sydney-based designer Henry Wilson of Studio Henry Wilson is appealing to our sense of sight and smell with his latest product for the home — an oil burner for Australian luxury skin care brand Aesop.
Designing an oil burner was never something Wilson says he pictured himself doing, graduating from the Netherlands’ Design Academy Eindhoven before returning to Australia to set up his successful studio, where he’s focused on furniture and industrial design.
“As a designer, you always think you’ll be designing chairs and tables and lights,” Wilson says. “But actually, the reality is, there’s many good examples of chairs, tables and lights. Perhaps more chairs, tables and lights than you can justify.”
Being asked to design an oil burner was a challenge, he says, because there are no “classic typologies” to refer to as a starting point.
“Often with those classic typologies of tables and chairs and things,” says Wilson, “you’ve got these sort of standout classics that everything is held against, but you’re actually left scratching a little bit with an oil burner.”
Wilson says he wanted to design something that reflected Aesop’s design ethos (the company is known for its interest in Eastern philosophy, love of odd numbers and asymmetrical design) along with his own, and the asymmetrical bowl shape of the oil burner does just that.
“I wanted to do something that would talk to the nature of brass,” he says. “Brass was chosen because it’s always had this really lovely affiliation with candlelight. That richness of candles flickering from brass is such a lovely combination.”
Brass is also a great material for transferring heat, Wilson says.
“It’s got a high copper content,” he says. “Heat is important in an oil burner because to release those essential oils, you need to warm up the oil.”
Collaborating with Aesop came about naturally, says Wilson, who has designed two of their store interiors, and began when the company’s founder tapped him on the shoulder in a Melbourne coffee bar one day after recognizing his name.
“We sat down and got talking, and it grew out of a friendship, really,” says Wilson. “We just discussed various things and work, and then he was in Sydney, and my studio at the time was in Balmain and it was a bit serendipitous that Aesop had a position come up in Balmain for a store they were looking to do, and he asked me if I wanted to do the store.”
As a designer, Wilson says, this too was outside his general scope at the time, but he saw it as a good opportunity.
“In Holland,” he says, “their approach to design is very much a conceptual one. You learn a conceptual frame work or rules or ways of design, and they can be applied from anything interiors to an airplane seat.”
The fall fragrance Aesop has released to accompany the oil burner is called Beatrice, and is described as “a warm, enlivening blend of earthy and citrus notes to ground spirits and stimulate the senses.”
“In fall and winter, we tend to launch fragrances that are a bit heavier. A bit cozier,” says Vancouver Candle Co. co-founder Nick Rabuchin. “We anticipate that people are burning them at home on colder nights.”
The feeling that scented candles give to a home, says Rabuchin, is what has inspired him and his partner Farouk Babul since launching four years ago.
“It completes the space and makes you feel good,” he says. “Like you’re setting the mood.”
Vancouver Candle Co. has just released “limited-edition vessels” for their Great White North collection, which come in two sizes.
“We went on a sourcing trip,” says Rabuchin, “and ended up finding a very talented glass blower, and thought that there was an opportunity to do a collaboration there. The vessels are all mouthblown and hand-tooled. And each one is available in our five signature fragrances in the Great White North collection.”