In Bogotá’s Museo del Oro sits the most famous piece of gold in Colombia: the Poporo Quimbaya. Cast from tumbaga — an alloy of gold and copper — around 300 AD, it’s a small ceremonial vessel with a rounded body that opens upward into a slender neck that blooms open at the top. Its oddly minimal, modern lines have made it a national symbol, even printed on Colombia’s currency. The Quimbaya were goldsmiths of “great elegance of conception, manufacture and finish” — and this is their masterpiece.

The Poporo takes that ancient silhouette and gives it light. Three layered segments swell and open the way the vessel’s neck flowers upward, finely slatted so the glow escapes in soft petals of light and shadow. Where the Quimbaya worked molten gold to catch the sun — gold they called the “sweat of the sun,” a sacred material, not currency — we work light itself, made layer by layer in Melbourne.