There’s an intriguing realism to Anieszka Banks’ Harvest series — candles that take their form directly from seasonal produce, translating the everyday into something entirely unexpected.
Working from her studio in West Auckland, Anieszka, who originally trained and worked as an illustrator, casts each of her candles using moulds taken from real produce, preserving not just their form but texture. The candles are then hand-finished with vegetable and mineral pigments. A series of objects that sit somewhere between still life and functional design.
Lemons, peaches, limes: each is rendered in beeswax, their surfaces retaining the subtle irregularities of the original fruit. A softness here, a dimple there; organic details that resist uniformity and instead celebrate variation.
Material choice is central to the series. Beeswax, naturally fragrant and slower burning than paraffin, brings a different tempo to the work. “It really forces us to be present in the moment,” Anieszka says. There’s an inherent slowness to the process, mirrored in the burn itself.
That sense of time extends to how the series is made. Fruit is selected at its peak before being moulded; each candle is produced in small batches, with a focus on local, low-impact materials. It’s a way of working that mirrors the life cycle of the produce it references; cyclical and tied to seasonality.
“Patience is woven into each stage,” Anieszka says, from waiting for fruit to ripen through to the final burn. It’s a sentiment that defines the Harvest series as a whole — work that asks for time, and rewards it equally.
