To be allowed to build a monstrance for a church is an accolade for any silversmith. The monstrance is one of the most important ecclesiastical showpieces and has a central role in the Catholic liturgy, namely it carries the Blessed Sacrament: the host. Accordingly, Hans-Joachim Bleier from Rottenburg goes to work with great attention to detail. Since it is a unique piece, there is no ready-made construction plan to which he can adhere. He has to come up with his own solution for all the technical challenges. After all, a monstrance should not only be beautiful, it must also function: The user, in this case the priest, must be able to insert the host during the service in a consecrating act. There must be no jerking or jamming.

Such an order offers Bleier a wide variety of crafts: from brass to silver to enamel, he has to work with a wide variety of materials and produce every single element himself - there are no prefabricated parts for a monstrance. Some work, such as setting stones or building a hinge himself, is delicate and requires a lot of patience and precision. Other work, such as driving and forming the metal, on the other hand, requires physical strength and sweat. In the end, there are hundreds of individual parts in front of him, all formed and worked on by hand for hours, which he painstakingly assembles into a whole.