Rigaud Cyprès Candle

The Cyprès is a scented candle of deep green wax poured into a plain glass tumbler, so that the colour shows on every side. A polished metal lid sits over the glass, and a red grosgrain ribbon, woven with the maker's name and tied by hand in a bow, circles it. Lit, the soft wax melts quickly and gives off the scent the house describes as Mediterranean forest: cedar wood, sharpened with bergamot and lavender. It is sold in a box or tube printed with green and white stripes and the words Rigaud Paris.

Its maker, Rigaud, was a Paris perfumer long before it made candles. Jean-Baptiste Rigaud arrived in the capital from the Auvergne in 1852, opened a shop called Parfumerie Victoria in honour of the English queen, and sold scents with names such as Jockey Club and Kiss Me Quick. His Eau de Kananga, of 1869, sold across Europe and America, and his son Henri's Un Air Embaumé, of 1914, inspired paintings and poems.

After the Second World War the house passed to Mario Rigaud and his wife Viviane, who had the idea of combining a fine fragrance with wax. Rigaud calls the result the world's first scented candle, and dates the Cyprès, the candle it calls its masterpiece, to 1959. Those claims are the house's own; no independent account of them has been found.

Rigaud says that its candles are still made by hand in France: poured, prepared and packed by hand, with fragrances composed in Grasse and a wax of its own that burns evenly to the bottom of the glass without leaving a crater. The Cyprès comes in three sizes, a 60-gram small candle that burns for about 28 hours, a 230-gram large one of about 90 hours, and a 750-gram Prestige candle that lasts some 150, each in the same green wax and clear glass.