Votives for Keeps

I recently bonded with my new friend Visnja over the issue of candlelight, or rather the lack of it on a restaurant table.  We were dining with our partners at a small, lovely place in the West Village –excellent food, great service, a pretty room with crisp yet cozy decor, and, well, bare tables.  Visnja caught me looking rather forlornly at some votives flickering on the nearby bar and confessed that she too wished our table had the warmth of candlelight.  Emboldened by our Negronis (and each other), we asked our waiter if he could bring one of the candles from the bar to our table, and he graciously complied.  We, our food (and our dates) looked much better for it, and that little candle’s glow reflected the feeling of the evening.

I like votive candles around the house too.  They’re less formal and more flexible than candlesticks, and they cast their glow around the tabletop in a way that I always find warm and festive.  Until recently, though, I had found very few votive holders that I really liked. And then I discovered Glassybabies (which, by the way, seems like an oddly whimsical name for objects of such subtle beauty).

Glassybaby votives are hand blown and finished by Seattle artisans in a multi-step process involving three separate layers of glass. What really distinguishes them, though, is the stunning array of colors they’re made in — over 300 in production, with about 200 for sale at any given time.  The colors vary in intensity, purity and opacity, making it easy to create an interesting mix of, say, a dozen subtly different colors, even if you restricted your palate to, say, green.  (The eight candles in the picture above are eight different colors of bright yellow and orange.) The colors look different lit and unlit, and change with the surrounding light.

Here are some snapshots from my most recent visit to the Glassybaby store at 555 Hudson Street in New York.

An edited assortment at the front of the store

Some beautiful greens

Pearly whites and neutrals

At $40 a piece, Glassybabies aren’t inexpensive, but I think their beauty and craftsmanship justify the price.  I think I’ll enjoy ours for a long time, and I look forward to adding to our collection over the years.  Maybe I’ll even keep one in a bag to take to certain restaurants . . . .

Glassybaby has two stores in Seattle, one in Bellevue, Washington (addresses on Glassybaby’s website), and one store in New York at 555 Hudson Street (between 11th and Perry).  It also has a nice online store at www.glassybaby.com.