Black Culture Candles: Best Trip Down Memory Lane
These candles can transport you to some of life’s best moments — joyfully gathering with family, kicking back on weekends and visiting your grandmother as a child.
“I said, What does that experience feel like? And, What does that feeling smell like?” says Lori Henry-Parnell. “Scent, memory and emotion are all intertwined.”
The Akron native started selling handmade small-batch Black Culture Candles in September 2021 to rekindle these experiences. Take a whiff of pineapple, fresh coconut and white jasmine in Black Joy, dark chocolate, Kentucky bourbon and fig in Friday Night or green tea, florals and amber in Grandma’s Garden. The candles ($20-$65) come in engraved glass jars, the slow-burning wooden wicks create a crackling sound and the vegan coconut apricot wax glitters an enchanting gold as it melts.
Although these candles were inspired by Henry-Parnell’s stories and shared experiences within the Black community, she encourages people of all races and ethnicities to connect with the scents and their stories.
“We are more alike than we are different,” she says. “I’m hoping that with the stories and with the smells, you’ll be able to see, Yeah, we do have things in common.”