A wax witch stamped Tavern predates 1949. One stamped Gurley does not. An oil company's leftover paraffin is the reason either one exists at all.
The short version
- The Buffalo, New York company that became Gurley Novelty began in 1927 as W&F Manufacturing, a candy and wax-novelty maker tied to Franklin Gurley. Accounts differ on whether Gurley founded the firm outright or bought it.
- In 1939, Socony-Vacuum Oil Company commissioned the firm to mold its excess refinery paraffin into decorative holiday candles, sold under the name Tavern Novelty Candles.
- Franklin Gurley bought the Tavern brand rights in 1949 and renamed the company the Gurley Novelty Company. That date is a working dating tool: a candle's bottom reading Tavern was made before 1949, one reading Gurley was made in 1949 or later.
- At its peak the company turned out roughly 30 million wax novelty candles a year and was, by one newspaper's account, the leading American maker of Halloween candles from 1940 into the late 1960s. Production ended in Kenmore, New York, in February 1994.
- No confirmed realized auction price could be found for any Gurley or Tavern candle. Every figure in this guide is a dealer's stated range or a current asking price, labeled as such.
On this page
An oil company's leftover paraffin started the business
Franklin Gurley ran a Buffalo, New York company called W&F Manufacturing starting in 1927. The Buffalo History Museum describes Gurley as having established the firm that year; a later newspaper account describes him instead as having founded the business by purchasing W&F Manufacturing outright. Either way, the company's first products had nothing to do with holiday decor: candies, chocolates, and wax novelties, including wax lips, wax mustaches, wax fangs, and a wintergreen-flavored wax item sold as "horse teeth."
A separate thread feeds into that same wax-novelty business. The American Oil and Gas Historical Society traces an earlier Buffalo confectioner, John W. Glenn, whose J.W. Glenn Company had grown to 100 employees and 18 traveling sales representatives by 1923 selling paraffin novelties of its own. Glenn Confections, the society states, later became the wax-candy division of Gurley's operation, without giving an exact date for that merger.
The candle business, the part of the company collectors actually chase, began in 1939. Socony-Vacuum Oil Company, a predecessor of today's ExxonMobil, approached Gurley with a practical problem: its refinery at Olean, New York, was generating paraffin wax as a byproduct in quantities that needed a use. Gurley's company molded that surplus paraffin into small, holiday-themed figural candles and sold them under the name Tavern Novelty Candles.
Why the name on the bottom changed in 1949
Franklin Gurley bought the rights to the Tavern brand in 1949 and renamed the company the Gurley Novelty Company. Tavern-marked candles are described by collectors as somewhat less detailed than the candles that followed under the Gurley name, though both lines came from the same designer and the same company.
The candles sold cheap and sold everywhere. A small, 3.5-inch figure retailed for ten cents on its own, two for twenty-nine cents, or three for forty-nine cents; larger figures, roughly six inches tall, typically stayed under a dollar. Dime stores carried the bulk of the volume - Woolworth's and Ben Franklin's both stocked them - and department stores including Macy's sold them as well.
Sales peaked in the late 1960s. By one newspaper's account, the company was the leading American maker of Halloween candles from 1940 into that late-1960s peak, producing roughly 30 million wax novelty candles a year at its height. Decline set in during the late 1970s. Production continued in a diminished form for another two decades, with the company's final address at 2299 Kenmore Avenue in Kenmore, New York, before manufacturing stopped in February 1994.
Looking for a Gurley or Tavern candle for your own shelf, or sourcing a lot for resale?
How to date one from the bottom label
- Turn it over and read the name first. Tavern means made before 1949. Gurley means made in 1949 or later. This is the single fastest test available and it requires no reference book.
- Look for the round paper label. Most genuine pieces carried one on the base, though decades of handling have peeled many off. A candle with no label left is still dateable by its molded name, where one survives, but is harder to pin to a precise year.
- Compare the label's wording and layout to a confirmed example before assuming an exact year. Collectors who handle large numbers of these candles describe small variations in label design across the decades of production, useful for narrowing a date range further once the Tavern-or-Gurley question is settled.
- Check the packaging, if it survives. Shrink-wrapped cellophane points to the 1960s or later. Earlier candles came in plain, shallow cardboard boxes for single figures or paper boxes for sets.
- Measure it. The common figure runs about 3.5 inches. A roughly 6-inch figure is less common and typically brings a higher price.
- Judge wear by the wax, not the wick. Most of these candles carried a wick but were bought and displayed rather than burned. Genuine age shows up as softened detail, color fade, or surface crazing in the wax itself, not scorching.
The one test that works without a reference book
Everything else in this section helps narrow a date further, but the name on the bottom does the real work. Tavern is pre-1949. Gurley is 1949 or later. No other single detail on the candle answers the question as directly.
The look-alikes: new candles, or new molds
Production stopped in 1994, but the designs did not disappear. Vermont Country Store now sells reproductions of several classic Gurley figures, and the sources disagree on exactly how those reproductions were made. Wikipedia's account states that Vermont Country Store purchased the original molds. A longtime collector, commenting on a collectibles guide to the brand, instead describes the original molds as having been scrapped when the company closed, with the modern reproductions made in China using original vintage candles as patterns rather than the original tooling itself. Both versions cannot be true at once, and this guide did not find a source that settles which one is.
Either way, collectors who have compared an original side by side with a current reproduction describe the modern piece as visibly inferior in finish. A missing Tavern or Gurley label is not, on its own, proof of a reproduction - plenty of genuine candles lost their labels decades ago - but a candle that looks crisp, bright, and unworn rather than softened by age is worth examining more closely before it is priced as an original.
Where the records disagree
Two gaps in the record are worth naming rather than smoothing into a single tidy story. First, how the company itself began: the Buffalo History Museum, drawing on its own object and archival holdings, describes Franklin Gurley as having established W&F Manufacturing in 1927. A regional newspaper's history of the brand instead describes Gurley as having founded the business specifically by purchasing an already-existing W&F Manufacturing Co. that same year. A third source, the American Oil and Gas Historical Society, adds that an earlier Buffalo wax-novelty maker, John W. Glenn's J.W. Glenn Company, dating to at least 1923, was folded into Gurley's operation at some unstated point as its wax-candy division. None of the three sources checked for this guide cites a document that would resolve whether 1927 was a founding or an acquisition, or exactly when the Glenn operation joined it.
Second, the fate of the original molds after 1994: purchased intact by Vermont Country Store, per Wikipedia, or scrapped entirely, with the current reproductions built from new tooling patterned on surviving original candles, per a collector's account cited above. This guide presents both because it could not independently confirm either, and because the answer matters directly to anyone trying to tell an original from a reproduction by feel rather than by label alone.
What it sells for now
No confirmed realized auction price for a Gurley or Tavern candle turned up in the research for this guide. The figures below are asking prices and dealer-stated ranges, not completed sales, and are labeled that way deliberately.
A regional newspaper covering the collector market reported vintage 1950s Gurley Halloween candles - black cats, witches, ghosts, and jack-o-lanterns - typically asking fifteen to one hundred dollars depending on condition, with a rare three-dimensional "golden glow" burn-through jack-o-lantern design exceeding one hundred dollars. A separate collector's own published range, offered explicitly as personal collecting experience rather than a market index, puts an Easter bunny at twelve to fourteen dollars, a pair of ducks at six to eight dollars each, a pilgrim couple at ten to fifteen dollars, a large six-inch Santa at thirty to forty dollars, and a grim reaper or ghoul figure at eighteen to twenty dollars.
Owl and Twig does not currently stock a Gurley or Tavern candle; none of this guide's figures are tied to a shop listing.
Hunting dime-store Halloween, Christmas, or Thanksgiving wax figures for a collection or a booth?
For another collector's guide to Halloween paper and holiday ephemera, see Owl and Twig's guide to the Beistle jointed skeleton, where the reproduction is also made by the company that made the original. For a broader look at the category, see why vintage Halloween collectibles hold their value. See more Field Guides
Sources
- Gurley Novelty, Wikipedia, for the company's 1939 founding of its candle line, the Tavern brand name, the 1949 rename, product sizes and pricing, and the account of Vermont Country Store purchasing the original molds.
- Spotlight Artifacts, Buffalo History Museum, for W&F Manufacturing's 1927 founding by Franklin Gurley, the company's later addresses, and its February 1994 closure.
- Gurley candles ignite interest among dealers, Post Bulletin, for the account of Gurley founding the business by purchasing W&F Manufacturing in 1927, the company's standing as the leading American Halloween-candle maker from 1940 into the late 1960s, its peak output of roughly 30 million candles a year, the Tavern-versus-Gurley label distinction, and current asking-price ranges for 1950s Halloween figures.
- Gurley and Tavern Candles Collectibles Guide, Little Vintage Cottage, for label-design variation over time, care and storage advice, and a collector-commenter's account of the original molds being scrapped and current reproductions being made in China from original candles used as patterns, plus a personal price range for several figure types.
- Gurley vs Tavern Candles, From Grandma's Tree, for confirmation that Franklin Gurley designed both the Tavern and Gurley lines, the 1949 brand purchase, and the shift to cellophane packaging in the 1960s.
- An Oleaginous History of Wax Lips, American Oil and Gas Historical Society, for the J.W. Glenn Company's 1923 origins as a Buffalo wax-novelty maker, its later role as Gurley's wax-candy division, and the Socony-Vacuum Oil paraffin supply from the Olean, New York refinery.
- Original Gurley Candles, Michelle Knows Antiques, for the bottom-label authentication method and the note that many original labels have been lost over time.
- Wikimedia Commons, for the early-1900s Halloween postcard used as this guide's figure.
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