A jeweller, a box of bees and a factory in Medina.

Root Candles is the candle business of the A.I. Root Company of Medina, Ohio, which dates its founding to 1869. Its founder, Amos Ives Root, began as a jeweller on the Medina town square. As his great-great-grandson Brad Root told the Akron Beacon Journal in 2009, honeybees swarmed the shop window one day in 1869, and A.I. had a worker capture the colony in a box; the episode sparked a fascination with beekeeping. English Wikipedia describes beekeeping as a hobby Root took up in his twenties, and says the A.I. Root Company was founded in Medina in 1869 to make beehives and beekeeping equipment.

Root built a publishing side alongside the factory. The company says he started the trade magazine Gleanings in Bee Culture in 1873, and his book The ABC of Bee Culture, published in 1879 according to English Wikipedia, continues today as The ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture. Wikipedia also records, citing PBS’s Nova, that Root wrote eyewitness reports of the Wright brothers’ flights at Huffman Prairie in 1904. The magazine outlasted the beekeeping business: in 2009 the Beacon Journal reported that, although the company had left the beekeeping trade, it still published the monthly Bee Culture magazine and kept a few hives.

The company’s mark on Medina is still visible. In 2017 Catholic News Service described the oldest part of the brick factory as carrying a large stone beehive surrounded by the words “In God We Trust” and the year it was built, 1878. English Wikipedia notes that a Medina middle school is named after A.I. Root and that the town’s high-school teams are the “Battling Bees.”

From hives to the altar.

The move into candles came through the church. English Wikipedia says that in 1928 the company began shifting to candle making after a local priest asked for high-quality liturgical candles, and that its production of beekeeping equipment was reduced and eventually phased out. The company tells the story through A.I. Root’s son Huber Root: in its account, Ernest and Huber Root inherited the business in the 1920s, and Huber developed a candle hand-rolled from strips of beeswax from the family’s own hives after the priest’s request. Catholic News Service gave the same account in 2017. The 2009 Beacon Journal feature instead credited A.I. Root himself with rolling sheets of beeswax around wicks to make altar candles.

Church candles remain central to the business. The company describes itself as a maker of liturgical candles since 1928, and the Beacon Journal called altar candles Root’s flagship product in 2009. In March 2017 Catholic News Service visited the Medina factory during paschal-candle season, describing decorators applying wax lambs, crosses, numbers and Greek letters by hand to tall wax pillars, each candle made to order and shipped to churches across the United States. Each candle took the decorators about 45 minutes, the agency reported, and Brad Root said that most paschal candles were made and shipped in the 15 weeks leading up to Easter.

Decorative candles came later. The Beacon Journal reported that the company added decorative candles in the 1960s. The 2009 feature described several methods in use at Medina: pouring melted wax into tempered-glass jars, dipping wicks repeatedly into hot wax in a computer-controlled version of an early American technique, moulding, and compressing wax pellets. It also reported that beeswax was being blended with other natural waxes in a home-fragrance line called Legacy by Root.

Candles and home fragrance.

The seven brands in this group are all candle and home-fragrance names: Capri Blue, Colonial Candle, Village Candle, Maison Berger Paris, Root Candles, Thymes and Bridgewater Candle Company. Candle and home-fragrance brands sit at many different points in the trade, from family workshops that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger consumer-goods groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a small gift shop to a department store or its own website.

A candle brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a fragrance name, a jar, a label and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the town where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its candles and fragrances are actually made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its labels and packaging have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Still a Root family business.

Root Candles remains a family business. The company says it is led by the fifth generation of the Root family, with Brad Root as president and chairman of the board. In 2017 Catholic News Service quoted him as the founder’s great-great-grandson and reported that the company was still owned by A.I. Root’s direct descendants; English Wikipedia likewise describes Root Candles as owned by the Root family and run by the founder’s great-great-grandson. The company says it has been a member of the National Candle Association since 1974.

On manufacturing, Root says its candles are made in Medina, and its website carries the line “Made in America Since 1869.” Its current ranges include Seeking Balance spa candles, Aristas, Collenettes and dipped tapers, alongside votives and pillars, and the company describes its candles as made with a beeswax blend. Its liturgical candles, made to order for churches, sit alongside these decorative lines under the same family name.

For a design guide, Root Candles shows a brand whose own telling of its history runs through its raw material: the swarm on the jeweller’s window, the hive on the factory wall and the beeswax church candle. Compare Colonial Candle and Village Candle, two more American candle names. For this guide we use honey, beeswax ivory and brick red with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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