Night instrument No. 1 — Ebb
Ebb is a bedside instrument that shapes the light and sound of your room across the night — drawing you down towards sleep, holding the dark perfectly still, and giving the morning back slowly. One billet of aluminium. One dial. No app.
£2,950 · Ships March 2026
Fig. 1 — Ebb in Nightfall anodised aluminium, 23:10. Forty minutes into Descent; the diffuser at 1,800 K.
§ 01 The name
In the Greek telling, the kingfisher — the halkyōn — built her nest on open water in the dead of winter, and for fourteen days around the solstice the winds held still so that she could. Sailors called them the halcyon days: a calm that was made, not found.
That is the whole of our idea. Sleep cannot be bought, but the conditions for it can be built, with the patience you would bring to a watch movement or a concert hall. We are nine engineers, acousticians and machinists working out of a former cutlery works in Sheffield, and we think the third of your life spent in the dark deserves objects as considered as the ones you use in daylight.
We make few things, slowly, and we make them to be repaired. Ebb is the first of them.
§ 02 A night with Ebb
Press the dial once at bedtime. Everything after that is Ebb’s work — and you are not meant to notice any of it.
22:00
I · 22:30 – 23:30
Over forty minutes, Ebb draws the room down from a warm reading light to 1,800 kelvin — the colour of a fire’s last ten minutes — and then below the point at which you can tell it is still on. Beneath the light, a bed of brown noise begins at the volume of a quiet conversation and falls by one decibel every four minutes, slowly enough that you never hear it change.
2,700 → 1,800 K · 42 → 34 dB
II · 23:30 – 05:40
The light is gone. What remains is a noise floor shaped to your room — tuned by you on the first night, by ear, with the dial, to the pitch of your street, your pipes, your neighbour’s late return — and held at thirty-four decibels, about the level of a library. It does not drift, swell or respond. Change is what wakes you, so nothing changes.
0 lux · 34 dB, unchanging
III · 05:40 – 06:40
An hour before you mean to rise, the diffuser begins to glow, ember first. Ebb climbs through the colours of an actual sunrise to 4,000 kelvin by the time you are due up, while the noise floor lifts away so gradually that the first thing you notice on waking is the quiet.
1,800 → 4,000 K · 34 dB → silence
§ 03 The workshop
We could have moulded Ebb in plastic and sold it for a tenth of the price. It would have buzzed faintly at thirty-four decibels, and you would have heard it at three in the morning. So the housing is cut from solid metal, the grille is drilled one hole at a time, and each instrument is assembled start to finish at a single bench, by a single person.
Borosilicate glass, acid-etched by hand, so the light reaches the wall without ever showing you its source.
1,400 holes, 1.2 mm across, drilled in sequence and deburred by hand. The pattern is tuned to the driver behind it, not to the eye.
Turned from solid aluminium around a brass core, so it coasts to a stop. Forty-eight detents; press once to begin the night.
A single billet of 6082 aluminium, four hours and ten minutes on a five-axis mill, then bead-blasted and hard-anodised. There are no visible screws.
“I listen for the hum you would only ever hear at three in the morning. If I can hear it, the instrument goes back on the bench.”
§ 04 Omissions
Most things sold for sleep are designed to keep you engaged. Ebb is designed to be forgotten the moment the light goes out.
An app
Setup happens once, with the dial, and takes about four minutes.
An account
We do not know who you are unless you write to us.
A screen
The only display is the light itself.
A microphone
You tune the noise floor by ear, turning the dial until the street disappears.
A subscription
You pay once. Servicing is included for as long as you own it.
A sleep score
You will know how you slept. You were there.
Fig. 2 — Ebb in Nightfall, by daylight
§ 05 Reserve
£2,950
Including VAT, delivery, setup in person wherever we can reach you, and servicing at the workshop for the life of the instrument.
79 of 120 reservedShips from March 2026