Our Story

Bashford & Pitt started at an intersection. Literally.

Lauren Crisler was living at the corner of Bashford and Pitt Streets in Old Town Alexandria when she started making candles. She had a degree in public history and a deep interest in the kind of history that lives outside textbooks. Old Town was the right place for that. Walk three blocks in any direction and you're standing somewhere that mattered.

The name came easily. The brand followed.

Each candle is drawn from a specific moment in early American history. Not a general era or a vague aesthetic. A person, a place, a day. The 1783 candle is built around the first Christmas George Washington spent at Mount Vernon after the Revolutionary War ended. The Wheatley candle is Phillis Wheatley's story, the first Black woman published in America. Every candle ships with a story card because the story is the point.

Lauren pours every candle in small batches outside Washington, DC. Her work has been featured in the Alexandria Times and on local television.

History is everywhere. Bashford & Pitt is a way to bring it home.