Our commitment to transparency
Our commitment to transparency
Les Fondeurs d'Histoires is two people, Mathieu and Franck, and a stone penty (a traditional Breton cottage) in Loctudy, in the Pays Bigouden. Everything you receive passes through our hands.
We chose to do everything ourselves to keep control of every detail: writing the stories, the drawings, printing the labels and cards, making, packing and shipping.
This page simply tells you who does what, what is handmade, what we buy elsewhere and the place digital tools hold in our work. 🕯️
We pour candles and we tell stories.
Both happen here, in the workshop, with four hands.
It all starts with a story, our own
Before the label, and often even before the fragrance, there is a tale.
Every story is imagined and written by us.
We choose its world, its characters, its era and the emotion we want to convey. The fragrance is then composed with a master perfumer in Grasse to translate that story.
Like many makers, we use digital tools, including writing assistants, to proofread a text, fix a turn of phrase or lay out a page of the website. The ideas, the choices and the final version remain our own.
Every text is reread, reworked and sometimes rewritten several times, until it tells exactly what we have in mind.
From idea to candle, everything happens in the workshop
Four gestures filmed in the workshop, with no editing or staging.
We draw
Every label design is drawn by hand, then traced and reworked one by one.
We print
Labels and collector's cards are printed and cut one by one, on site.
We pour
Every candle and every wax melt is poured by hand, then checked before it leaves.
We sign
The gold seal is applied by hand on every candle, with its silk ribbon.
Our labels are made of paper, with no plastic. Their line drawing is done by hand: it is neither perfect nor symmetrical, and that's intentional. A gold seal, applied by hand, holds a silk ribbon.
The raw wooden lid is laser-engraved in the workshop. We can also engrave your message inside it.
The collector's cards slipped into every box carry the illustration of the story. These illustrations grew out of our sketches and directions, with the help of digital image-creation tools, and were then retouched and approved by us. We print them ourselves.
An immersion, never an illusion
This is probably the point we care about most.
On our product pages, the photos show the product you will actually receive: the real candle, the real wax melt, with its container, size, label and finishes.
Some mood images on the website are staged or retouched to extend the world of a story. They are there to draw you into the tale, never to mislead you about what you are buying.
gives birth to a fragrance.
is hand-poured to carry it.
invites you into its world.
The simplest way is still to come and see: you can smell all our creations at the Loctudy workshop, by appointment, or find us at our markets and stockists.
What comes from us, and what comes from elsewhere
Handmade doesn't mean everything comes out of the workshop. Here are the details.
What we do ourselves
- Writing the stories
- Choosing the fragrances and testing them
- Pouring every candle and every wax melt
- Burn tests before anything goes on sale
- Drawing the labels
- Printing and cutting the labels and cards
- Laser-engraving the lids
- Applying the seal and ribbon
- Packing and shipping
- This website, and replying to your messages
What we source elsewhere
- The fragrances, composed by a master perfumer in Grasse, free from CMR substances and phthalates
- The plant-based wax and the OEKO-TEX certified cotton wicks
- The amber glass jars and raw wooden lids
- The kraft boxes, with their corn-based window
- The gold seal, made by a specialist workshop
- The burners and accessories, selected from partners
Digital tools, behind the scenes
They save us time. They decide nothing.
To run the shop, lay out a newsletter, retouch an image or proofread a text, we use digital tools, including artificial intelligence tools.
Nothing is published or decided automatically. Every text, every image and every piece of content you see is reread, corrected and approved by one of us before it goes out.
And no tool pours a candle, tests a wick or closes a parcel for us.
✦
Our commitment
To tell you things as they are, without embellishment.
Every story is written by us.
Every label is drawn by us.
Every candle is poured by us.
Every parcel is prepared by us.
A question about a material, a step or a visual? Write to us at contact@lesfondeursdhistoires.com, we'll be happy to reply.
“We don't just sell candles. We pour wax around the stories we'd love to tell you.”