On making objects that slow you down

I started Éluvane because I missed ceremony in my own evenings. Years of work-from-home blurred the line between writing code and pouring a glass of wine; the workday never quite ended, and the evening never quite began. Lighting a candle became my small protest - a way of saying: now this part starts. I wanted to make the object that marks that moment for someone else.

What I mean by quiet ceremony is not anything formal. It is the gesture of turning down the lights when no one is watching. Eating off the better plate on a Tuesday. Standing in the kitchen for a minute longer than you needed to. A candle is not the point; the pause is. The candle is the prop that makes the pause look like a decision, and I think a well-made object can change how seriously you take your own evening.

The studio is in Midrand, Johannesburg, in a back room with afternoon light. I pour the wax myself, one candle at a time, and the forms are the ones I want to live with - restrained, sculptural, in the ivory-and-mocha palette of the Highveld. Each candle takes longer than it should. The faint mark where the wax met the mould stays on the finished piece, and I list it as part of the object, not a defect. I think that is part of what is meant to come through it.