With the closure of one of my local antiques centers imminent, a lot of the local dealers have been trying to liquidate their stock, and this involved some of them taking it to the local weekend flea-market to try and sell it off at greatly reduced prices.

That was how I got my hands on this curious little device!

I love anything to do with writing, antiques, history, and silver, and when this little doohickey showed up and scratched all those itches at once – I had to buy it!

Never seen one before? I’m not surprised. They’re not exactly common.

This long, square, silver tube is a device known as a sealing-wax dispenser! It would’ve held a long, square stick of sealing wax, which the user could extend or retract using the sliding silver toggle on the side of the tube.

It was made in England, and has full English hallmarks on the sides, dating it to London, 1904.

The dispenser measures six inches long, and is perfectly square. Inside is a sliding metal collar which is used to grip the sealing wax when it’s pressed into the tube.

But you might ask – why does such a thing exist?

It’s simple, really. Dispensers like this were intended to make the process of melting sealing-wax easier. The extender-slide on the side of the dispenser allowed the user to advance the stick of wax and melt it with a candle or cigarette lighter, while also keeping one’s fingers as far away from the flame as possible – something which would become harder and harder as the stick of wax got progressively shorter. Burning your fingers on hot sealing wax is something you’d never forget doing!…I speak from experience.

Devices for holding, melting and dispensing sealing wax used to be very common in the 1800s and early 1900s, especially with the rise of official government postal systems which made written correspondence faster and cheaper. Along with wax dispensers like these, there were also wax-jacks, and even wax-melters, which had little spirit stoves and spoons for heating, melting and pouring the liquid hot wax.

Part of the reason for such an array of devices specifically for sealing wax was because of the nature of sealing wax itself.

Unlike candle-wax, which is deliberately soft and pliable, for easy melting, sealing wax – traditional sealing-wax, anyway – has an entirely different composition. Along with the wax and the colourant to make it red, black, blue or whatever other colour (red is the most traditional), sealing wax has a third ingredient: Shellac.
It’s this shellac which gives the wax its distinctive hardness and makes it harder to melt. This also means that it’s harder to break, which keeps the letter or parcel more secure once sealed. And if it is broken, then it’s impossible to put back together again, which tells the recipient that the parcel or document had been opened before its delivery.

But it’s because traditional sealing wax is harder, and harder to melt, that all these devices were invented. None of them are strictly necessary (you can easily melt sealing wax without them), but they make a tricky and potentially painful task much easier, and more pleasant overall.