Snuffer, ca. mid-19th century
While the terms “snuff” and “extinguish” have become interchangeable today, the original use of the word “snuff” applied to the charred end of the wick. Unlike conical snuffers, which extinguish the flame of a candle, a snuffer such as this would remove the charred wick (the snuff) while preserving the flame.
A candle flame burns in the melted pool of wax at the base of the wick and travels up the wick. While modern candle wicks are braided, allowing the wick to curl in upon itself and burn up in the flame, unbraided wicks would become longer as the wax burned down around it, eventually becoming so long that it would fall over into the side of the candle. The flame would then burn into the side of the candle and waste precious wax or tallow. This snuffer trimmed the wick further away from the base of melted wax, thus allowing the flame to continue burning as the charred wick is trimmed off. The side compartment would catch the charred wick, and the point at the end of the snuffer was for digging out the tip of the wick if it fell into molten wax.
In 1758 Benjamin Franklin described a device he bought for his wife Debbie that appears to have been a “snuffer.” He wrote that it was an “Extinguisher, of Steel . . . and is of new Contrivance to preserve the Snuff upon the Candle.” Snuffers of the scissor type were popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, but the introduction of self-consuming wicks around 1840 gradually made snuffers such as this one obsolete.
