About Us
Some things start with a question.
Ours started with this one: why do so many candles smell like a version of something rather than the thing itself? Not lavender — a vague floral. Not lemon — a cleaning product. Not cedar — a memory of the woods rather than the woods. The real versions of these things are extraordinary. The Lavandula angustifolia vera grown at altitude in Provence. The Sfusato lemon on the terraced cliffs above the Amalfi Coast. The ancient bark of a sequoia grove at dusk. Those are the things worth making candles about.
Who We Are
Ember & Oak is a two-person handcraft studio in Waterville, Maine. We started making candles at home — the way most small candle companies do — with a stovetop, a thermometer, and an unreasonable conviction that we could make something better than what was already out there. We tested every fragrance, every wick size, every pour temperature. We burned hundreds of candles before we sold a single one. And when we finally felt like we had something worth sharing, we named it after the two things that felt most like us — the warmth of an ember and the groundedness of an oak.
We are not a large company. The things that make Ember & Oak worth caring about are precisely the things that don't scale — the attention, the specificity, the unhurried pace of making something one jar at a time and asking whether it's good enough before it goes out the door. Every candle we pour, every bar of soap we craft, every bath bomb we make carries the same question we started with: is this the real thing?
What We Believe
Every ingredient has a story. We choose ingredients because they are extraordinary, not because they are convenient. Sea moss has been used by coastal communities for centuries. Dead Sea salt has a mineral concentration found nowhere else on earth. Bergamot grows almost exclusively on a narrow coastal strip in southern Italy. These things matter to us — and we think they should matter to you too.
Burn times should be tested, not estimated. Every burn time on every Ember & Oak candle label is the result of actual testing in our studio under normal conditions. A 7 oz candle burns for 40–45 hours. A 20 oz candle burns for 110–120 hours. We will not put a number on a label we haven't earned.
Names should mean something. Silver Needle is a real grade of white tea. Sequoia is the Latin name of the tree. Veracruz is a real place. Kesari is a real word in Sanskrit that means exactly what we need it to mean. We named things this way because we believe the story behind a fragrance is part of the fragrance itself.
Small batches matter. We pour every candle and craft every body product in small batches because that is the only way to pay attention to each one. When demand grows we will make more batches — not bigger ones.
Honesty on the label. Net weight is net weight. Ingredients are what they say they are. The city and state on every label is the city and state where the product was actually made. We think this should go without saying. We say it anyway.
Made in Maine
Waterville sits between the forest and the coast — close enough to the Atlantic to smell it on a clear day, close enough to the woods to hear them on a quiet one. That in-between quality shapes everything we make.
Maine is not a place that rushes. Neither are we.
Every Ember & Oak candle and every Ember & Oak Body product is made by hand in our Waterville studio. Every order is packed by hand and ships from Maine. If you have a question about a product, a scent, or an order you can reach us directly — there is no customer service department, just the two of us.
We started this because we believed we could make something better. We continue it because our customers tell us we did. Thank you for being here.