Candle making at Abergorlech, 1895

Description

This postcard was produced by the 'Excelsior Photo Co. Ltd.', Carmarthen and is postmarked 1906. It features a photograph of three women making candles at Abergorlech in 1895 (the photographer being David Thomas, turner, of Tan'r allt, Brechfa). The elderly woman is Hannah Jones, Banc, Abergorlech, pictured here with two of the maid servants on her farm. She is wearing the flannel clothing and tall beaver hat associated with 'traditional Welsh costume'. By this date, however, it would have been an increasingly rare occurrence to see a woman in this garb, even in the rural districts of Wales. It may well be that, on this occasion, the elderly lady donned the clothes which were fashionable during her youth purely for the benefit of the camera.

The women are making a supply of tallow candles, probably for their own domestic use (although women often manufactured candles for retail purposes). Tallow candles were used during the Middle Ages and continued to be made until the early twentieth century. The simplest way of making these candles was to take narrow bands of linen, tie about six or eight of them to a wooden rod and then dip them in a vat of boiling tallow. The process was repeated many times until the tallowed strip had attained the proportions of a candle.

Sources: Iorwerth C. Peate, 'Tradition and Folk Life. A Welsh View' (London: Faber and Faber, 1972), p. 59 and F. G. Payne, 'Welsh Peasant Costume' in ' Folk Life', Vol. II (1964), p. 53.