Pop-Up Diary

A Day at the MLK Library

Washington, D.C. · June 2026

Setting up: the JARE banner, a white runner, and a row of amber waiting to be opened.

There is a moment, right before a pop-up opens, when the table is quiet. The jars are lined up. The oils are uncapped. And then someone walks past, slows down, and says the four words we never get tired of hearing.

“Oh my gosh — that smells so good.”

We spent the day inside the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in downtown D.C., a building made of light and glass, and we filled our little corner of it with the things we make by hand: soy candles poured into amber glass, room sprays, and the fragrance and essential oils that started it all. What follows is the day, more or less in the order we lived it.

The Table

Everything we brought sat on a stepped white riser — Drunken Pear, Amalfi, California Breakfast, Like Home, Retreat, Harmony, Orange Spice, Apple Cider Spice, After Hours, Betty Lou’s Tobacco, Lili, and NOEPE. Lids off, wicks trimmed, a few burning low so the scent could do the talking.

The full lineup on the riser — every name a little story of its own.

A few of the scents from that riser are ready for your own space:

Shop NOEPE Shop Retreat Shop Drunken Pear

Down at the front, the room sprays and oils caught the afternoon sun — Sunday Brunch, Amalfi, California Breakfast, Eucalyptus Dream, Lavender Cream. These are the bottles people pick up, spray once into the air, and go quiet for a second. You can watch a memory land on someone’s face.

Room sprays and oils, lined up and ready for a test spritz.

The People

A pop-up is really just a long conversation with strangers who don’t stay strangers. One woman leaned in, breathed deep, and lit up — the kind of reaction you can’t fake and never tire of. Behind the table, the questions kept coming: Are you on Instagram? Do you have a website? We wrote it down, handed it over, and watched a first sniff turn into a follow.

The test-and-talk — where a scent becomes a story.

Someone congratulated us on being featured in Oprah Daily. In the middle of a Saturday, between samples, a stranger knew our name.

That one stayed with us. So did the repeat customer who recognized us from another event here in D.C. — proof that the work is starting to stick, that JARE is becoming a name people carry from one corner of the city to the next.

And then there was the smallest visitor of the day: a little one in a JARE cap, reaching up toward his mom as she turned a candle over in her hands, deciding. That’s the whole thing, really. A scent in one hand, family in the other.

The next generation of the JARE family, already a fan.

The One Everybody Wanted

If the day had a headline, it was Amalfi — bright, sun-warmed, a little Mediterranean escape in a 2 oz bottle. The room spray sold out. More than a few people told us the same thing: they wanted something to freshen up the car after hauling kids home from sporting events. Cleats, gym bags, the works. Amalfi, it turns out, is the antidote.

Shop the Amalfi Room Spray

Only a couple left after the pop-up — or reach for the Amalfi candle for the same escape.

Until the Next One

We packed up as the light shifted, jars back into their crates, the banner folded down. Days like this are why we do it — not just the sales, but the faces, the questions, the little one in the cap. Every candle that left the table is burning in someone’s home tonight. That’s the part we never get used to.

If we met you at the MLK Library: thank you. If we didn’t, the whole collection is waiting for you online — and we’ll see you at the next one.

Shop the Full Collection

— With warmth, JARE

JARÉ · THE CANDLE CO. · Hand-poured soy · jarecandles.com