Making the Corinth: a ribbed pillar in three pours.

The Corinth is a fluted column. The form is borrowed from a classical capital - the moment where a stone shaft meets the architrave - and translated into soft wax. It looks simple. It is not. The mould has thirty-two ribs, each one a place where the wax can shrink unevenly, pull away, leave a hairline. Pour the wax too hot and the ribs blur. Pour it too cold and you get a chalky bloom across the front face that no amount of buffing will lift.

What worked, eventually, was three pours instead of one. The first pour fills the mould to about two thirds; it cools long enough that the outer shell sets but the core stays liquid. The second pour is a top-up that bonds to the shell and fills the inevitable shrinkage cavity around the wick. The third pour is small - less than a tablespoon - and it is purely cosmetic, smoothing the meniscus where the wax met the air. The whole sequence takes the better part of an afternoon. You cannot rush it; the temperature window for each pour is narrow, and if you miss it, the rib lines split.

The first ten attempts went in the recycling bucket. Some had blooming, some had air pockets, one had a wick that wandered off-axis and burned a tunnel down the side. The eleventh is what is on the shop page now. It is a deep mocha because that colour hides the small mould marks best, and it is a one-mould-at-a-time piece because the labour does not scale. We list those marks as part of the object. We list the labour as part of the price.