Light/Candles & Scent
Happiness Pillar Candle by Yinka Ilori
By Yinka Ilori for Areaware
Color blocks lifted from the painted legs of Yinka Ilori's Types of Happiness chairs, poured into a pillar you could leave unlit. $29+.
Yinka Ilori is a London designer of British-Nigerian heritage who started out in 2011 rescuing secondhand chairs and giving them new lives, drawing on the Nigerian parables and bold West African fabrics he grew up around.
His chair series Types of Happiness gave each of sixteen chairs its own kind of joy, told through the colors painted on its legs.
These delightfully colorful and modern pillar candles carry that idea off the chair and onto the table.
The color blocks come straight from those chair legs, each one standing in for a particular happy feeling. Sculptural enough that we would leave one unlit on a shelf, and cheerful enough that lighting it feels like a small occasion. It stands on its own, so no holder needed.
Two colorways. Happiness 1 is blue and green on a yellow base. Happiness 2 is pink and orange on a blue base. The set of two brings one of each, which is honestly how we think they look best!
Produced by Areaware in New York. Paraffin wax, about 4 by 4 by 9 inches. Happiness 1 burns for roughly 55 hours and Happiness 2 for roughly 45. Trim the wick before lighting, burn on a heat-safe surface, and never leave it unattended.
