Golden Banana Bunch Ornament

The Golden Banana Bunch Ornament is a cluster of four bananas blown from clear glass and finished edge to edge in metallic gold. That gold goes down last, over a surface textured while the form was hot, so light breaks across the ridges rather than sliding straight off them. The stem end is drawn to a point, its hardware seated into the glass rather than sitting on top, and the whole bunch is light enough to trust to an outer branch where it will catch something. My cousin Roland spent one autumn spraying household objects gold and stopped only when he ran out of things he was allowed to touch. He maintains that gold is the one finish honest enough to admit it is a finish. The Royal Ontario Museum keeps far more in its study drawers than it will ever put on a wall, and gilded produce feels like precisely the sort of thing that turns up in one of them, filed under a heading nobody would have guessed.