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Candlestick

Candlestick


Title	Candlestick
Coverage / Year	1825 to 1850
Description	Tin hog-scraper style candlestick. Has a round concave base with a tin cylinder protruding upwards from the center and a flattened lip with a short flat handle. 5" high. Candle drippings cover the entire base and cylinder. The height adjustment lever on the stand is missing.
Interpretation	It's hard to imagine just how dark buildings were at night before electricity. Depending on the time period people lit their homes with whale oil lamps, candles, kerosene, or gas. Candles could be made at home and provided a portable light. Candles were made out of tallow or beeswax. Beeswax was expensive and harder to get so tallow candles were much more common. Tallow is the hard fat from sheep, cows, or deer. Most candles were used in the winter. In the summer people got up early and went to bed when it got too dark to see. Candles were made in several ways. One method was to dip the wick into hot tallow or wax until the candle was the right size, another was to pour liquid tallow into a mold. A good candle maker could make about 200 candles a day.
Lesson Plans / Themes	Westward Expansion;
Learning Standards	16 History; 15 Economics;
Author or Creator	Early American Museum
Subject / Keywords	Candlesticks; Wax; Pioneers; Lighting; Tallow;
Collection Publisher	Early American Museum
Further Information	For any further information related to this record, please contact the Collection Publisher. See http://images.library.uiuc.edu/projects/tdc for more information about this project.
Rights Management Statement	http://images.library.uiuc.edu/projects/tdc/conditions.htm
Resource Identifier	1968.001.1914
CONTENTdm file name	13.jpg

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