On the twentieth of March 2023 we carried Aureole down from the bench and hung it in the front room of our workshop. Two of us held the ring while a third fed the stem through its collar, and the fourth was there only to say whether it looked level. It did not. By the middle of the afternoon it did, and we stood back and let it burn for an hour with nothing else switched on.

Aureole is a circle of light sixty centimetres across, held in mid-air by one slender stem of brushed brass. The ring is hollow. Light travels inside it and escapes through a slit four millimetres wide cut along the lower edge, so the source is never seen — only the soft round glow it throws on the wall behind. That glow is where the name came from. An aureole is the ring a painter puts around a head. Ours is thrown by a lamp.

What the ring asked of us

The brass began as a straight length and was bent cold, over eleven passes, on a form we cut ourselves in the first years of the workshop. Cold bending is slow and unforgiving; heat the metal and it goes soft and lazy, and the circle loses its temper. Between passes we measured with a template and a good eye. The finish is brushed by hand and then waxed — no lacquer, because lacquer flattens the way brass takes a low winter light. The ring is welded in one place only, at the top, and that seam is filed until it disappears.

The facts, for the curious

• Ring diameter 60 cm; overall height 74 cm; weight nine kilos.
• Hand-bent solid brass, brushed and waxed, stem in blackened steel.
• Light exits a 4 mm slit along the lower inner edge; the source stays hidden.
• Warm white 2700 K, dimmable down to something close to a night-light.
• Eleven pieces this year, each numbered on the underside of the collar.

People came through that week and stood under it longer than we expected. One of the apprentices, who has been with us since our founding and is not given to praise, looked up and said it appeared to weigh nothing. It weighs nine kilos, which is rather the point. We will make eleven and then stop. A circle leaves nowhere for a mistake to hide.