The Worshipful Company of Tallow Chandlers is one of the ancient Livery Companies of the City of London. The organisation, which engaged not only in tallow candle making but also in the trade of oils, first received a Royal Charter in 1462.
Traditionally tallow chandlers operated separately from wax chandlers: beeswax candles customarily being used in churches, while tallow (animal fat) candles were generally used in homes. As is the case with most other Livery Companies, the Tallow Chandlers' Company is no longer a trade association of candlemakers, its decline precipitated by the advent of electric lighting. The Company now exists as a charitable institution, and supports education in oil-related fields.
The company ranks twenty-first in the order of precedence of City Livery Companies. Its motto is Ecce Agnus Dei, Ecce Qui Tollit Peccata Mundi: Latin for Behold the Lamb of God, Who Takes Away the Sins of the World, in reference to Jesus.
Famous quotes containing the words company and/or tallow:
“A man should not go where he cannot carry his whole sphere or society with him,Mnot bodily, the whole circle of his friends, but atmospherically. He should preserve in a new company the same attitude of mind and reality of relation, which his daily associates draw him to, else he is shorn of his best beams, and will be an orphan in the merriest club.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It is not their bones or hide or tallow that I love most. It is the living spirit of the tree, not its spirit of turpentine, with which I sympathize, and which heals my cuts. It is as immortal as I am, and perchance will go to as high a heaven, there to tower above me still.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)