Most candles are destined for the trash after burning down, taking their leftover wax with them. But what if your candle could give birth to its own replacement? That's exactly what the Rekindle candle holder does.

Designed by Benjamin Shine, this ingenious contraption doesn't just hold your candle—it captures every drop of melting wax and transforms it into a brand new candle. As your candle burns, the melted wax drips through openings in the holder and flows into a transparent container below, where a wick already waits in the center.

How a Candle Becomes Its Own Offspring

The magic happens in the base. Instead of wax pooling uselessly or running down the sides of a traditional holder, Rekindle's plexiglass cylinder catches it all. The molten wax accumulates around a pre-positioned wick, cooling and hardening into a perfectly formed new candle.

Once the original candle has burned completely, you simply remove the newly formed candle from the base, flip it upright, and light it. The cycle continues—each candle creating the next in an almost poetic loop of regeneration.

The Reality Check

Before you imagine infinite candlelight, there's a catch. Some wax is lost to combustion every time a candle burns (it's not magic—it's chemistry). The flame literally consumes some of the wax molecules, converting them to carbon dioxide and water vapor. This means the Rekindle doesn't give you endless candles from one original.

According to the designer, you can regenerate a candle approximately 12 times before the wax supply runs out. Still, that's 12 candles from the price of one—not bad for what would normally be trash.

Design Meets Sustainability

Shine offered the Rekindle in multiple finishes to match different aesthetics:

Stainless steel for modern minimalists
Anodized aluminum for lightweight durability
Porcelain for classic elegance

The concept garnered significant attention in design circles around 2014, though it remained more of a limited-production art piece than a mass-market product. You couldn't just grab one off Amazon—interested buyers had to contact Shine directly for custom orders.

What makes Rekindle brilliant isn't just the clever engineering. It's the philosophical shift: designing objects that minimize waste by building regeneration into their core function. Instead of buying candles perpetually, you're buying a system that extracts maximum value from materials you've already purchased.

In a world drowning in single-use products, the Rekindle candle holder stands as a small but elegant reminder that thoughtful design can turn waste into wonder—one melted drop at a time.

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