Trudon & Carrière Frères: candles, illustrated
Two maisons, one family — and two very different ways of putting an illustration on glass.
One family of maisons, two impossible briefs: centuries-old botanical plates from the Muséum de Paris, redrawn on matte glass for Carrière Frères — and Brecht Evens' night sky wrapped around Trudon's spun-glass candles, up to the 2.8 kg Great, finished with gold leaf laid by hand after sublimation.
Some houses commission decoration. The Trudon family of maisons commissions illustration — and expects the glass to carry it the way paper would. Two projects, two maisons, one discipline: getting artwork born on a page to live on a curved, spinning, luminous surface.
Carrière Frères: the Museum collection
The first project came with Carrière Frères, the botanical maison of the Trudon family, for its collection with the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris. The concept reaches into the Museum's archives — centuries-old botanical plates of the very flowers behind each fragrance — and brings those illustrations onto the glass of the candle itself, recreated in 360° digital sublimation.
The technical choice that makes it work is the base: a matte finish under the artwork, so the decorated glass recalls the feel of the original drawing on paper. Not a photo of an illustration wrapped around a vessel — an illustration that seems drawn on it.
Trudon: an enchanted night, in three sizes
Then came the holiday collection for Trudon itself — Enchanted Night (2025), a celestial capsule illustrated by the Belgian artist Brecht Evens: constellations and golden motifs on deep night hues, wrapped full-body around Trudon's iconic vessels.
Two things made it a real challenge. The first is the glass itself: Trudon's candles use spun glass, with the beautifully irregular rim that is part of the maison's identity — exactly the kind of geometry standard decoration lines refuse. The collection also runs across three sizes, from the classic format up to the 2.8 kg Great candle, in four colourways — each night sky with its own cast of characters, each size carrying its own print.
The second is what happens after sublimation. A Trudon signature is the gold leaf glowing inside the vessel — and gold leaf is applied by hand, as a further step on an already decorated piece. Sublimation is a precious decoration: it asks for extreme care in any processing that follows. Thanks to the mastery of the workshop applying the leaf, the two crafts coexist on the same glass — 360° sublimated artwork outside, gold light inside, and the maison's classic metal seal to finish. A collection made to end up under Christmas trees, and it did.
Why it matters
Home fragrance is where decoration is touched, lit and looked at for hours — a category ATIU serves alongside perfumery and spirits. These two projects show the range inside a single client family: a museum archive rendered with paper-like restraint, and a contemporary illustrator's night sky on spun glass — both fused into the surface, with no plastic added and no label in sight.
See how digital sublimation works, read the Barbancourt case study, or request a mock-up on your own vessel.