FIRST PERSON: The man who makes candles for Hollywood blockbusters

“I’VE been making candles for more than 50 years and I am still enjoying it at the age of 75.

I was born in London in 1939 at the start of the Second World War.

As a child I would go to sleep with a candle burning by my bed, a night light in a saucer of water, because of the blackout.

When I got older, I used to play with the warm wax when it was soft and malleable and model it into rabbits and things. My mother used to freak when she caught me melting down old candles in a pot just to play with the wax.

When I was 17 I went to live in Germany for a few years and was amazed at the vast amount of beautiful candles of all shapes and sizes on offer.

Returning to London in the early sixties I couldn’t find decorative or even coloured candles in the shops anywhere. I was later to find out that decorative candles had a massive 55 per cent purchase tax on them as they were considered a ‘luxury item’.

I started making my own candles using white household candles as my base and improvising the moulds using things I found around the house – yoghurt pots, convoluted car hose, corrugated roof sheet, bottles.

Things developed from there; I found wick and dye manufacturers and started to make candles seriously. I was so completely obsessed I could hardly sleep at night thinking of new ways to make them.

All my friends were fascinated with my hobby and there was nothing out there in the shops so I decided to make a candle kit. I still sell that original kit today and it’s still brilliant value with enough wax to make about 18 chunky candles.

I advertised the kit in Exchange and Mart, a weekly publication that sold a huge range of stuff.

As well as this, I was constantly promoting candle-making as a hobby in magazines such as Woman and Woman’s Own.

The candle kit took off and in no time candle-making became the most popular hobby in Britain.

My partners and I based our firm, which we called ‘Candlemakers Supplies’, on the kit, supplying wax, moulds, all the different kinds of wick and dye – everything you need to make candles at home, because, as I said, at this point, candles still had the 55 per cent tax on them.

We opened our first shop in1969 in Moor Park Road; then we moved to Beaconsfield Terrace Road, and finally, in 1976 to Blythe Road, just behind Olympia Exhibition Hall in west London.

The 70s was a very exciting and creative time. Most of our candle-making customers were hippies like us and they were really into design and colour. They used to come to the shop from all over to buy their materials and to learn and share new candle-making techniques.

We did our first ‘do it yourself’ exhibition in 1970 at Olympia and every year after until 1980, demonstrating candle-making as a hobby with great success.

At that time I was asked to appear on Nationwide with Bob Wellings and received five sacks of mail wanting more information. We started running classes at the back of the shop which were great fun.

During the power cuts and the ‘three-day week’ in the early 70s the country completely ran out of candles. We were shifting ten tonnes of wax a day.

In 1972 a props buyer came into the shop and asked me to make some black candles with three wicks in them, which was unheard of at the time, for the 1973 film Dracula, starring Jack Palance. I advised him against it and told him that the candles would smoke like mad. However, he didn’t care; he just wanted as much light as possible, so I made them.

This was the start of us making candles for film and television.

In the beginning, it was only small runs of about 100 at a time until Ken Russell and David Lean started ordering them and that side of the business steadily grew.

In 1980, I made a film myself on candle-making with Lesley Judd, which was shown several times on the BBC.

Over the years I have been lucky enough to have made lots of TV appearances demonstrating my craft such as on Pebble Mill at One, The Generation Game (three times as ‘the expert’), Tales of The Green Valley, Kirsty’s Homemade Home and various children’s shows such as Vision On, No 73, What’s Up Doc and Cre8.

The biggest candle I ever made was a commission for the British Epilepsy Association in 1989. It measured 30 feet high by 3ft 6in in diameter and was the tallest free-standing candle, weighing over seven tonnes. It took four winter months for the wax to set.

I have also written several books on candle-making, the first of which was translated into 10 languages.

In 1991, I was immensely proud to be given the Royal Warrant of candle-maker to the Prince of Wales to supply his homes in Wales, Highgrove and St James Palace with candles. It is a great honour as only 50 people have such warrants.

After our son George was born in 1988, my wife and I decided that we didn’t want to bring him up in London so we started looking for somewhere in the country to house the actual candle-making side of the business.

We loved the idea of converting a church into living and workshop space as they were selling them off relatively cheaply at that time.

An artist friend of mine in Argoed said there were some empty churches in South Wales so we came here to have a look but they were either tiny chapels or too big to heat.

At the bottom of the list was Gelligroes Mill, a derelict 17th century water mill with a barn and cottage in Pontllanfraith, near Blackwood.

We fell in love with it immediately – the water mill, the cottage by the river, the humpity-back bridge; it is a million miles from our flat above the shop in London. The Mill also has an amazing history with links to the Titanic!

It is the place where, in 1912, the miller’s son, an amateur radio enthusiast called Artie Moore, picked up the first SOS distress message from the Titanic over 2,000 miles away in the Atlantic using his own handmade radio equipment. This was important because it was the only place in the whole of Europe where the message was received.

After two years of hard restoration work and significantly lighter in the pocket we finally moved in and opened our Candle Workshop at Gelligroes Mill in 1993. We also created a museum in the mill dedicated to Artie Moore’s story.

On the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic in 2012 we had a commemoration event at the mill which attracted around 1,000 people.

We have now been here 22 years and know that we made the right decision. Our son George, who grew up with the story of Artie Moore’s achievements, has himself become a physicist and is currently in America, carrying out research at Princeton University.

Since being in Wales, the demand for film candles has really taken over our business. We are so blessed to have two fantastic candle-makers here — Graham Morgan and Amanda Brennan, who now have nearly 40 years’ experience between them.

We have made candles for films such as Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, First Knight, Interview with a Vampire, Cinderella, Stardust, The Huntsman and Gosford Park to name but a few.

For television, the biggest jobs have been the blockbuster Game of Thrones, Downton Abbey, Poldark, Wolf Hall, Mr Selfridge and Merlin, which was filmed in Wales.

It takes about half a day to make a rack of around 160 candles but some set decorators ask for them on the same day so we need to be geared up for sudden orders.

All our candles are made by hand in the traditional way for complete authenticity. We work most weekends and sometimes through the night.

As well as this, we never turn down private commissions to make bespoke candles for weddings, birthdays and other events.

Indeed, the candle business is booming.

The huge popularity of scented jar candles has encouraged many people to think about starting their own candle businesses.

Over the years I have taught many people how to make candles, including Joe Malone’s mother (back in the day) and Dimple Kapalia, the Bollywood star.

We currently run candle courses both here at Gelligroes Mill and also at our London shop, which is now on Shepherds Bush Road.”

Visit candlemakers.co.uk