Savvy buyer

摘要

Today's consumers are candle connoisseurs. Are you? Candles have an earthy appeal, recalling a simpler time. Yet today the "simple" candle generates 2 billion dollar in annual U.S. sales. Candles have come a long way from the crude luminaries first created by the ancient Romans using tallow (animal fat). During the Middle Ages, smelly, smoky tallow gave way to beeswax that burned pure and clean in theaters, churches, and the homes of the wealthy. Eighteenth-century America contributed fragrant greencandles made of bayber-ries. Nineteenth-century inventions such as molding machines, wax-hardening ingredients, and paraffin wax produced from petroleum oil made candles easy to use, affordable, and widespread.