From a kitchen in Gurgaon to your door.

Before there was a name, there was a kitchen in Gurgaon: two pots, one for the wax and one for the water beneath it, a thermometer, and a row of plain glass jars waiting on the counter. The first candles were for the house. The next were for friends, who asked for more. No box, no label, no story printed anywhere. Eight thousand candles left that kitchen without a name on them, carried away in newspaper and in handbags, and almost every one of them left with the same question: what is it called?

We waited until the candles had earned a name. Désir. Desire: the reason anyone lights a candle at all, not for the room, but for the moment they are hoping the room will hold. Then each of the ten was given its own name, in French and Italian, for the feeling it was made for.

Every one is still made by hand. The wax is melted in small pots, never by the drum; the fragrance goes in at a precise temperature; the wick is held straight while the wax sets. A candle takes a day to make and two days to cure, and a flawed one never leaves the room. What has changed is that we no longer make a candle until you have chosen it: each one is created upon request in three to five days, in a vessel you will keep and refill for years.

The First Hundred

The first one hundred candles made under the name Désir each carry their number on a brass plate set into the marble lid and the founder's signature on the box; commissioned one at a time, in the order requests arrive.

The surprise inside

Every Désir arrives with one of ten shapes sculpted in wax and set on its surface: The Flame (desire), The Crescent (night), The Lotus (stillness), The Sun (the first morning), The Wave (the road), The Star (a wish), The Leaf (growth), The Shell (memory), The Feather (lightness), The Knot (two made one). The house chooses; the customer discovers.