The Waxmelter Palette, Batik Pen, Little Dipper, and Squeeze Pen, offer a safe way to make batiks and encaustic paintings. These tools expand the ways to work with melted wax especially using colored wax from melted crayons.
Harold and Kiki Rabinowitz, both professional artists and art teachers, designed these tools for batik and encaustic artwork.
While teaching, they noticed that students enjoyed working with melted wax and crayons. Broken small bits of crayon are a natural bi-product of many art projects. Every classroom usually has a big box filled with them. Unfortunately the crayon bits are too small to handle or use. Harold and Kiki were always looking for inexpensive and recycled materials they could use in the classroom and thus the idea of the 'waxmelter' was conceived. They invented a safe tool to utilize crayon bits and candle ends. The waxmelting tools this creative team invented are truelly ingenious. The tools utilize material headed for the trash bin and offer the artist a way of working that is controlled, safer, and reliable.
The tools they designed are simple yet expand the ways artists create batiks and wax resist art by utilizing colored crayon and traditional batik wax. The Waxmelter Palette and Batik Pen heat high enough to melt wax but not high enough to burn it. The Little Dipper and Squeeze Pen are designed to work with the Waxmelter Palette. They are used to apply the melted wax and crayon to fabric, paper, canvas, wood, eggs and more. These tools are now popular among amatuer and professional encaustic artists.
Currently Harold and Kiki act in an advisory capacity. Their children continue to make tools enjoyed by thousands of artists and crafters world wide.
All our products are recommended for use by ages 12 and older,
are UL approved and made in the USA.
Witzend Workshop - a family run business
Broken crayons inspired Kiki and Harold Rabinwitz to invent the Waxmelter and other art tools.
Michael, Abbie, and Rebecca assembling Waxmelter Palettes in the Rabinowitz Design Workshop, 1970.
Not shown are Sandy
David
and Mary Rabinowitz