On Nov. 5, as the sun started setting, around 25 Swarthmore students gathered in the Wister Center, donned some very fashionable yellow aprons, and got to work making candles. However, this wasn’t on a whim. It was part of the candle-making event hosted by the Scott Arboretum & Gardens titled “Wonders of Wax: The Art of Candle Making.”
As part of the Arboretum’s DISCOVER series — a line of free workshops that aim to teach students new ways to engage with nature through crafting — Eric Schoefer, a proud member of the Philadelphia Beekeepers Guild and self-described “caretaker of the bees,” led the event. Attendees were broken into groups of four and took turns dipping a wooden frame with four wicks into a double boiler with melted beeswax collected by members of the Philadelphia Beekeepers Guild. The frames came from American philosopher and beekeeper Richard Clyde Taylor’s designs and were built by Schoefer, who happens to also be a carpenter.
Once the candles had enough layers of wax to hold their shape without the frame, they were removed, and everyone got, as some attendees called them, a “pair of nunchucks.” With that, the attendees continued adding layers until they were satisfied with their candles’ sizes. Over the course of the event, the candles went from cotton strings to what one group lovingly called “scary fingers,” and, finally, to full-fledged taper candles like those on the dinner tables of high-end restaurants. All attendees went home with two decently sized beeswax candles for friends and family who do not live in college-owned dorm buildings.
At the start of the event, Mackenzie Knight-Fochs, education programs manager at the Arboretum, said, “It’s going to be fun; it’s going to be great.” The smiles on everyone’s faces as they walked out of Wister into the chilly late-autumn air seemed to agree with that statement.
