María del Mar Ridaura

María del Mar Ridaura is co-founder of velas ardo, a brand of 100% natural scented candles made entirely by hand. A graduate in Business Management and Administration, she combines her professional career in finance with a craft that runs in the family: she is the third generation of candlemakers at Velas Ridaura (1940). She grew up surrounded by wax, wicks and moulds, and six years ago decided to turn this inherited knowledge into a project of her own, founding n-ardo, S.L. together with her business partner.

The brand works with soy wax, cotton wicks and high-quality fragrances, creating handmade pieces in which the raw materials and the construction of the scent are the starting point. There is something ephemeral in every ardo candle: “we work with a material destined to disappear, and yet its fragrance lingers, bringing back moments we thought we had lost”, in her own words.