#HTE

Primitive Timing/Lighting Device: A Self-Extinguishing Coiled Candle

This seems like an industrial design student project that actually got picked up by a manufacturer. It’s a coiled beeswax candle made by a company called Candle by the Hour, and it was supposedly “part of the 1600s dating scene. Known as a ‘courting candle’, protective parents would light one to limit the time prospective suiters [sic] could spend with their daughters.”

I say it seems like a student project, because I can just imagine the copy about how this “Urges us to reconsider the nature of time” or “recontextualizes the passage of minutes by forcing us to manually advance the candle,” you get the idea.

In any case, the object is popular enough that they’ve scored Home Depot distributorship.