British architecture studio Foster + Partners has launched its latest light produced in collaboration with Italian manufacturer Lumina: a tabletop design that emits a gentle glow.

The Eva is an indirect up-light that sits within a glass tube, and has an appearance akin to a candle or fireflies in a jar.

The effect is created by the concealment of the light source. The Eva's round, mechanised aluminium base holds an LED that projects upwards onto a reflective cone, which meets the top of the tube along a mitred joint.

To reach the reflector, Eva's light passes through two lenses. These work to both obscure the source of the light and to focus it on the reflector, creating the impression of a floating, illuminated cone.

Foster + Partners and Lumina have used Chip on Board (COB) LED, which combines multiple LED chips in a single module and creates a consistent and controlled beam without visible individual light points, similar to a flat panel.

A grooved wheel evocative of a camera lens control at the base functions as the light's on/off and dimmer switch. The base comes in black, bronze, silver and brass anodised finishes.

Eva originated with one of Foster + Partners' architectural projects in Asia, which called for a lighting solution that would spread light over a table with a large diameter.

The team's original idea to create the desired effect was to cut a hollow in an acrylic disc. This was followed by a prototype that involved solid glass, weighing in at 60 kilograms, before they settled on a design based on a light source and a reflector.

Eva was created together with Lumia and marks Foster + Partners' third lighting collaboration with the 35-year-old Italian studio, which manufactures at its Arluno plants just outside of Milan.

Their first light together was the slender Flo. According Foster + Partners' head of industrial design, Mike Holland, the lamp was designed to "reduce the silhouette to something that would almost disappear".

Their second collaboration, called Dot, extended the theme of disappearance. For this product, the designers focussed on hiding the source so that the pendant would appear as a disc of light.

"The Dot and Eva lamps are the result of a long collaborative design process between Foster + Partners and Lumina, which involved continual refinement and testing to produce the optimum lighting solution – a meticulous fusion of form, technology and material," said Holland.

"Both lamps make innovative use of the latest LED and lens technology, embodying their Minimalist essence in different ways, Dot as a pendant with a floating disc of light, and Eva a table lamp with a suspended cone of light."

The lights were both presented at London's Aram Store, while above it in the Aram Gallery there is a retrospective of Foster + Partners' industrial design work, titled Craft + Manufacture.

The exhibition presents the studio's architecture and industrial design work as a symbiotic practice. It includes such work as their Solus Chair for Cathay Pacific's lounges, sculptural Arc Table for Molteni&C, a model of their new Maggie's Centre for cancer care and a preview of the Tono faucets to be released in September with Porcelanosa.

Photography is by Aaron Hargreaves/Foster + Partners.