About Pen & Ink

Welcome to Pen & Ink Candle Company! We are so glad that you have made your way to our site.

Our Purpose

From 2017 to now has been a period of reflection for us; we attended & graduated from college and thought a lot about what we wanted to do with our lives, we lost someone very special that altered our frame of reference in the world, and we went through a global pandemic that forced us to rethink our priorities for the better. These factors inspired us to start Pen & Ink in the spring of 2021.

Brendan has always been fascinated by the notion of owning a business, intrigued by marketing strategies, business intelligence, and understanding customers. Caroline loves candles, and when she and Brendan found themselves - yet again - in the candle section of Target, Brendan decided to make one for her himself. From there, the idea of Pen & Ink was created. 

When deciding on a name for the company, Caroline knew she wanted it to incorporate her father - Gerry - in some way. Caroline lost her father very suddenly in the summer of 2017. Gerry was an artist, an art teacher, and the best father and husband. As one of his former colleagues described him, Gerry was “an unstoppable force of creativity, wit, and charisma.” Among the multitude of mediums he worked with, one of his most prevalent was pen and ink drawings. For almost every oil painting he created, a pen and ink of the same scene came before it - and with this came the name Pen & Ink Candle Company. The image on the label is one of Gerry’s pen and inks, showing his father-in-law’s fighter plane. 

Pen & Ink Candle Company has many different “whys” for us. It allows us to be creative, to take risks, to connect to someone we lost, to test ourselves, and to bring people together. We hope that our candles help you to find your why & inspire you to chase after what you want.