I came across this colonial Candle Snuffer at a resale the other day. Nicely made, all steel. I knew that it was a candle related implement, but I learned not what I thought... not for "snuffing" a candle at least the way we today understand the word snuffing.
The attached is from the Colonial Williamsburg web site. Keeping some light after sunset was, indeed, a challenge back in the early days.
Joe B
Today “snuff” means “extinguish,” but not in the eighteenth century. Benjamin Franklin bought a device in 1758 for his wife Debbie, that appears to have been what people today consider to be a “snuffer.” He said it was an “Extinguisher, of Steel . . . and is of new Contrivance to preserve the Snuff upon the Candle.” The “snuff” he meant was the charred end of the wick. An extinguisher, shaped conically, put out a candle. A snuffer, made like scissors, trimmed the wick while the flame burned.
The braiding of modern wicks, along with waxes of higher melting points, ensures wicks are consumed as they burn. Before such improvements, wicks had to be trimmed. Otherwise they drooped and folded against the edge of the candle, forming a spillway. The candle guttered; the molten-fat fuel ran down the side instead of being burned. As much as ninety-five percent of a tallow candle could run away if it was not regularly snuffed.
A snuffed candle did not go out but burned brighter, unless you snuffed too exuberantly and ended up, as Boswell did, “snuffing out” the flame. Wax candles did not need to be snuffed so often as tallow candles because the wax did not melt as fast. They were produced from beeswax taken from the honeycomb, bayberries taken from the bush, or spermaceti taken from the sperm whale, and were more expensive than tallow. No matter the candle chosen, it was hardly the bright, maintenance-free, cost-effective solution against darkness to which the twenty-first century is accustomed.
Beeswax could be left untended for long periods because its melting point is higher than tallow and bayberry. Bayberry candles were the second most expensive but almost as popular in the colonies as tallow. This may have been because of their better light or because of their perfume. Spermaceti candles were the most dear and beyond the reach of most people like tradesmen. But a surprising number of shops seem to have gotten along with no candles at all.