There is a unique, maybe priceless component at the core of this freaky lantern: the lens of a beholder's biggest eye. Made up of clear crystallin proteins, the lens of an eyeball flexes and changes its shape to bend incoming light toward the retina. In a beholder's eye, a series of powerful higher-dimensional filters and fractal arcane processes (also conventional amplification, refraction, reflection, etc) turns light into their antimagic ray. Most of these processes can be emulated by cunning craft inside the lantern, but no craftsperson has ever been able to make an artificial version of the lens. Including this grim token in the lantern is unavoidable and of course incredibly difficult. Eyeball lenses are tough but delicate, unique as a a fingerprint (or an iris). Each lantern is built according to the lens. They are constructed with painstaking care so that the intense mechanical pressure required to focus the lens doesn't accidentally destroy it. If the lens is lost then the half-finished lantern is useless. Another lens may be "found" but an entirely new lantern must be designed around it.
Whoever lights the lantern becomes attuned to it, their energies conjoined. If they do not have an open attunement slot they cannot light the lantern. If the attuned person moves over 15 ft away from the lantern, it will sputter and die. While the lantern is lit and they remain within range, they cannot end this attunement.
Once lit, the lantern will create a spherical antimagic field with a radius of 45 ft. This field will last for 8 hours. The actual light from the lantern is not bright enough to be seen normally, but in dim light or darkness the antimagic field is visible as a swirling purple-green pattern similar to ink in oil. The field itself can be shaped like any other light source using the lantern's sliding panels and iris, turning the spherical field into a semi-circle, a cone of varying width, a beam, a ray, or entirely concealed by closing all the panels. Even when closed, the lantern is still lit. The lantern will remain lit underwater, in a vacuum, upside down, when smothered, and in fact cannot be extinguished by conventional means. It can only be turned off by waiting until it burns out, or being abandoned by the attuned user.
Now, a warning: this lantern can only be lit once. The lens needs to be in perfect condition to initiate the magic, but the crystallin forms distort and the proteins begin to fray as soon as it starts. This is why the antimagic field only lasts 8 hours - not because of the lamp fuel, but because the lens is losing structure.
Staring too long into the lantern may cause the viewer to become entranced by the fractal patterns, to hallucinate visions of distant planes of existence, and be affected by strange magic. This could be an effect from the wild magic table, or maybe something weirder.*
The antimagic field works the same as the spell: nobody in the field can cast spells, maintain concentration on spells, take magic actions, create magical effects, or be targeted by magical effects. The duration of spells suppressed by the field continues as normal. If the innate properties of something have been permanently changed by magic, these changes may* remain (summoning, transfiguration or transformation, altered colours, mutation, augments, temporary hit points, etc) but cannot be altered while in the antimagic field. Magical properties of magical items do not function while in the field - a bag of holding is just a bag, telepathic connections do not work, weapons lose magical bonuses, and potions (including health potions) are just bad-tasting weird-coloured liquids. This also means that some* curses are suppressed by the antimagic field, but not all of them.
*at the DM's discrection
Notes: lighting the lantern, Debuff, Consumable
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