Red Sardines Ornament

Sardine gifts are having a moment, and this ornament was ahead of it: four silver-red sardines rendered in mouth-blown glass, lined up nose to tail as if the tin had been opened and improved. Each fish is painted separately — scales in metallic passes, a dark eye, the fins picked out by hand — so the group reads as four individuals who happen to agree on a direction. A silver cap and its loop finish the piece, and it rides level along the branch. My cousin Percy keeps a shelf of tinned fish he calls his cellar and describes vintages nobody asked about, a hobby that costs less than wine and irritates his brother more. The ROM has whole displays built on the idea that some things are only legible in numbers — a single specimen is a curiosity, a school is an argument — and these four make the case together, exactly as sardines have always preferred.