We are proud to release our new collaboration with our friends Nonna’s Grocer. Nonna’s Grocer craft artisan candles that celebrate home and heritage. Each candle is handmade in Australia, using quality craftsmanship to create products that surprise, delight and tell a story. Founded by designer Madeleine Hoy and joined shortly after by her sister Isabel, Nonna’s Grocer is family-inspired and family-run.
The Anjou Pear candle seamlessly blends the distinctive styles of both of our brands, marrying the shared values of consideration for natural materials and celebrating design.
Learn more about Nonna’s Grocer from Madeleine and Isabel and the work they do through this conversation.
Nonna’s Grocer was born from special inspiration for you - can you tell us the story of how it came to be?
Madeleine: Well, it all started in the kitchen with our Dad, who has worked his whole life as a chef in restaurants. He was telling me all about his Nonno who migrated from Salina in Italy to Daylesford (Victoria) where he opened his first fruit grocer. I got so swept up in the history and started pouring over the photos and artefacts that my Dad kept. I suddenly felt this immense motivation to blend my design career with my family history.
At the time I was working as an event designer and was often scouring for candles to incorporate into tablescapes, and felt there was a huge opportunity to blend candle and produce, thereby combining my narrative with my great grandfathers. It was only natural to eventually rope my sister into the business. Being inspired by family, I wanted it to be run by family too, so we have co-owned the business for the last few years.
Madeleine, you handle the creative side of things, where do you start when concepting a new piece?
Madeleine: Observing the hospitality industry is one of my favourite sources of inspiration. Watching chefs and home cooks play with food brings so much creativity to my life and often sparks new ideas. Collaborating with businesses to see what grocery-inspired shapes come to the surface is an incredibly rewarding process as well. When we land on the right concept, it just clicks—like the lime candles we created with Cantina OK! or the burrata collaboration with Vannella Cheese. I love weaving our heritage with the stories and traditions of other brands.
Your pieces are uncannily life-like, how much work goes into getting the final design?
Madeleine: Originally, I tried 3D-modelling and printing the produce shapes to create our designs, but it just never captured the natural, organic beauty I felt when holding a real piece of produce in my hand and the journey that the produce had been on from being grown, picked, packed, and transported. I love the imperfections that appear on organically grown produce, and the bumps and bruises it collects as it travels to its new home, ready to be eaten.
That’s when I started casting molds from real pieces of fruit in resin, making minor tweaks and changes to the resin cast, ready to be transformed into our candle molds for production.
What helps you when you’re lacking in creative inspiration?
Madeleine: Sometimes playing with new materials is the best way to get out of a rut. Recently I bought a new type of jelly-wax, which eventually led to the creation of an exciting old-school desert-inspired candle, which will be up online soon. I am also dabbling with rice wax at the moment and seeing how it looks and feels, which might turn into something down the track. I also love talking my ideas through with my sister Isabel. She is often the editor of my ideas in a way, so it’s a beautiful collaborative process to get a product from ideation to conception.
Isabel, collaboration seems to be a key pillar of your business, we’ve seen some wonderful pieces through the years. How does your work connect you with community?
Isabel: We genuinely love collaborating with like-minded people (from all disciplines!). Community, family and story-telling is ultimately why this brand exists, so these collaborations are easily the most exciting and rewarding parts of our business.
For example, working alongside one of our favourite clothing brands (ahem, Kowtow), whom we have admired for so so long, and getting to know the amazing team behind the brand as part of this process, has been such an honour for us and enables us to feel even more connected to the design community which we love.
It’s also beautiful when our communities cross-pollinate (food & design), bringing new connections and inspiration to everyone involved!
There’s a shared joy in the use of colour and form between Nonna’s Grocer and Kowtow - is there one piece from your time creating that stands out as the boldest?
Isabel: One of our boldest—and juiciest—creations has to be the plump tomato we molded about three years ago. We still get to enjoy its shape in all its glory, and dyeing her that perfect juicy orange-red is endlessly satisfying. It’s also one of our trickiest candles to make, so it’s a true love-hate relationship that keeps the spark alive!
