lump shop

2018—2020

Lump shop is Lauren Lubell & Alina Buevich—a small artisan candle sculpting operation based out of Oakland, California. Working as designers by day and artisan chandlers (candle-makers) by night, we started a small business and world called Lump Shop. Driven by our mutual interest in learning new processes, we craft, mold, and pour each candle by hand.

www.lumpshop.com

THE ORIGINAL LUMP FAMILY /

BRANDING /

Although the actual candlemaking process itself is more collaborative, I handled most of the visuals, including but not limited to the logo, web design, and printed marketing materials.

RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT /

As an industrial designer, Lauren had an established skillset with ceramic mold making and casting, which proved invaluable to the art of candle making. After extensive online research and controlled experiments, we developed our own custom wax mixture of paraffin, soy, additives, and colorant—this special mix ensured each candle looked vibrant and resistant to environmental changes.

After finalizing the composition of the wax mixture, we did more tests to finalize our pouring procedures and optimal temperatures. After a few months, the basic structure of our process could be broken down into four basic steps: sculpt, mold, pour wax, take out finished candle.

WEST COAST CRAFT /

West Coast Craft is a bi-annual juried exhibition of artist and designer craftspeople that takes place at Fort Mason in San Francisco. In the winter of 2017, we were accepted into the WCC Intro Scholarship program and given a free booth to exhibit our first collection of candles.

Although restricted by a tight budget and strict trade show fire code, we stood out from the crowd with a unique hand-painted table design and by playing up bright colors and textures. Each display candle character had its own island puddle to live on while the majority of the candles were prepackaged in their own individual boxes. This worked out well for easy purchasing and customers buying holiday gifts.

SF ART BOOK FAIR /

Eggy Press asked us to create a product for the 2019 SF Art Book Fair. We decided to use this opportunity to design a new candle that built upon everything we learned with the original line. This candle is ultra functional—it uses beeswax for a long, clean burn; although packaged as one link it comes with 8 candles; it includes a condiment candle holder; and once it burns down into the condiment holder it has a second life as a regular container candle.

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