Meet Old Flame Candle Co.: Neighbor Jaclyn King gives new life to antiques

Jaclyn King remembers standing in line at estate sales at 6 a.m. with her grandmother Ima, waiting as long as three hours for the doors to open. Her grandmother, an antique dealer who owned a business called Two Dumb Dames, “dragged” King to nearly every estate sale she could find.

“It was torture back in the day when I was a kid standing in line,” King says. “But I’ve always loved antiques.”

Years later, after a career in advertising as a graphic designer and art director, King found the demands of a corporate 9-to-5 no longer fit the life she wanted as a new mother. So, she decided to step back and start something of her own.

She started taking on interior design projects here and there. And the occasional graphic design projects.

As a thank-you gift for clients, King assembled packages with a candle and a plant tucked inside a vintage container. But every store-bought candle she found came wrapped in packaging she felt lacked personality — she wanted something more than a 4-inch tall glass container with simple labeling.

Then one day, while looking for a candle, inspiration struck.

“I had a drawer of probably 50 candles, half-burned,” she says. “I made a connection between the vintage piece and the candle.”

King calls it her “craft-tacular” moment. She realized she could combine the two things she loved most: hunting for vintage treasures and making beautiful candles.

Drawing on those childhood mornings spent searching estate sales, King founded Old Flame Candle Co., a business built around giving one-of-a-kind vintage finds a second life.

Today, each candle is poured into curated antique vessels, ensuring that no two pieces are exactly alike.

King first considered selling her candles on Etsy after King’s friend Kat suggested the idea. After taking a few days to weigh the logistics, she noticed that Chip and Joanna Gaines of Magnolia Farms, were accepting vendor applications for Magnolia’s Spring at the Silos event in March 2020. On a whim, she applied. 

“I was thinking, ‘They won’t accept me. I’m sure they’re full,’ but I applied, and they were like, ‘Yeah, absolutely come do the show,’ and it was going to be a good way to launch an idea I had,” King says

Only after she was accepted did King realize the scale of the event. She was expected to build a pop-up store that included shelves, a cash wrap and enough inventory for an event that draws roughly 40,000 visitors.

“We showed up, and this was in March of 2020, and I remember the drive there,” she says. “I was talking to my husband, and we had just heard about this thing called COVID, and I was like, ‘(COVID) is going to go nowhere.’”

It did.

The next morning, after King spent hours setting up and meticulously unwrapping 200 tubs of antique items, Magnolia Farms canceled the event.

“I was like, ‘Now what?’ We just invested all this money and made all these candles, and I didn’t know what to do with any of the stuff,” she says.

Then, Joanna Gaines reached out with an offer to feature Old Flame Candle Co. on Instagram.

Using her background in graphic design, King created an Instagram page, an online store and her brand’s logo. Once online, she bought a lightbox and photographed every product and stayed up for four days straight preparing for the online launch.

“(Joanna) started running stories, and we started selling, selling and selling,” King says.

Currently, she runs Old Flame Candle Co. from a studio above the garage of her Lake Highlands home. With more than 20,000 followers on Instagram, it’s no surprise that King has sold over 8,000 candles since 2020. 

The way to order is simple. Customers can email Old Flame Candle Co. to request a wax refill form, and then King’s team will create a custom listing based on the amount of wax needed to fill their item. King charges $1.95 per ounce to fill a piece. Once a customer has received their custom listing, they will pack and mail their item to King.

If the customers would like to drop off their item to King, they can do so by leaving it on King’s front porch and a few days later return to pick up their custom candle.

For customers who would rather shop online, patrons can pick from brass, glass, stoneware, copper or ceramic options and then choose their scent of choice. Prices for pre-filled antiques range from $32-$6,248.

“(Old Flame Candle Co.) falls in the luxury candle category because we’re not drop-shipping vessels from China,” King says. “We are investing in an antique.”

Old Flame Candle Co. has four year-round scents, like grapefruit tea and vetiver; tea, tobacco and tonka bean; cashmere and bergamot; and smoky birch and tobacco. King has a selection of fall/winter scents, like her mulled cider, clove-studded orange, freshly cut spruce tree, and peppermint and vanilla bean scents. She also offers unscented wax. And King sells her candles to Anthropologie and has been doing so since 2023.

When asked if the possibility of opening a storefront was in the future, King says that is something she could envision.

“As much as I love having my studio, I think having a storefront would be really fun,” she says. “Like a tiny one, where you could just pop in, drop off your candles and pick them up at the end of the day.”

Gabriella Ruiz, Old Flame Candle Co.’s dedicated candle pourer, is King’s 26-year-old right-hand employee.

“Working with a close friend makes the environment supportive and full of positive energy,” Ruiz says. “I have gained so much valuable experience learning the art of candle making.”

King further solidifies her business’ uniqueness by giving each candle a girl’s name.

“I give them girl names because antiques, to me, have such a history and a story,” she says. “I always envision where they’ve been, whose hands have touched them, what they’ve seen, and I love to be able to not only breathe new life into it, but keep it from getting thrown away or just walked by.”