01 — Aluminium
One billet, four hours on the mill
6061-T6, machined from a single block so the body has no seam to hold a resonance, then anodised to a matte graphite. We leave the tool path in the surface: it records how the object was made.
Vesper I — second series
An instrument for
the hours you
never see.
Vesper I reads the light and the noise of a room and holds both steady from dusk to first light. One billet of aluminium, one brass dial, nothing to configure.
Reserve a unit
£3,600 · built to order
01 — Intent
Sleep is a practice. The room is the instrument.
Most technology for sleep interrupts you and calls it a cure: a screen, an account, a small glowing report on how you did. Halcyon makes objects instead — instruments that hold a room steady for twelve hours and ask nothing of the person in it.
Workshop notes, spring · Zürich
02 — The night
One night,
in four movements.
Vesper I runs a twelve-hour score. It begins before you do, and ends when the room is bright enough to be a room again.
-
21:40
Dusk
The aperture warms to 1800 K and dims across ninety minutes, the way a lamp would if it were tired.
1800 K · 340 lm
-
00:15
Descent
Light falls to a floor of two lumens. A low bed at 38 Hz takes up the street outside, and nothing else.
2 lm · 38 Hz
-
03:20
Hold
Nothing changes for four hours. Held to within a third of a kelvin, which is the hardest thing an instrument can do.
4 h · ±0.3 K
-
06:05
Ascent
Light returns from the red end first. Sound arrives twenty minutes later, so you wake into colour rather than noise.
2200 → 4000 K
03 — Craft
Three materials. No others.
02 — Brass
A dial that keeps the record
The control is solid, unlacquered brass with thirty-two detents. It darkens where your fingers fall, so the instrument shows how it has been used. Nothing is stored anywhere else.
03 — Linen
Silence at the base
Stiffened Belgian linen over a felt core. It will not ring against a bedside table at three in the morning, and it will not slide.
04 — Note
Halcyon is eleven people: a workshop on Löwenstrasse, and a machine shop in Nagano that has made surgical instruments for sixty years. We build in batches of forty, and every unit is played for two nights before it is packed.
We spent four months on a sound, then took it out. The room is better without it.
Mira Halvorsen — founder, instrument maker
05 — Specification
Stated plainly.
Every instrument is measured before it leaves the workshop. The record is numbered and shipped with the unit it describes.
- Dimensions
- 168 × 168 × 62 mm
- Mass
- 2.41 kg
- Body
- 6061-T6 aluminium, single billet
- Finish
- Anodised graphite, hand-brushed
- Control
- Solid brass dial, 32 detents
- Light
- 1800–4000 K · 1–340 lumens
- Acoustic
- 2 × 38 mm drivers, 20–200 Hz
- Draw
- 4.2 W standby · 11 W peak
- Interface
- None
- Connectivity
- None
- Service
- Field-serviceable, ten-year parts
- Origin
- Assembled in Nagano, Japan
Full documentation: 44 pages, sewn, letterpress cover. Shipped in the crate, not in a help centre.
06 — Acquire
Vesper I is built to order.
Forty units leave the workshop each month. Reserve with a deposit and we will write to you on the day your instrument enters the mill.
Reserve a unit — £3,600
Deposit £720 · six to eight weeks · ten-year service
In the crate: Vesper I, a 3 m braided cable, a linen sleeve, and the measurement record for your unit.
Halcyon Instrument Works
Vesper I · No. 0412
Zürich · Nagano