Golden Sweet Corn Ornament

The Golden Sweet Corn Ornament is a full ear in blown glass, kernels in gold beneath a husk finished in metallic green. Husk and kernels are two separate finishes on a single form, which means the piece crosses the paint bench twice and gets masked off in between, and the join has to land exactly where the leaf turns. It is narrow for its height, takes a standard metal cap, and is made to slot into a crowded inner branch that wider pieces cannot use. At just over four inches it reads as a full ear rather than a token one. My mother-in-law Harriet judges corn entirely by the sound the husk makes coming off and has walked out of a farm stand over it, which she does not consider rude. TIFF runs on several thousand volunteers who turn up for eleven days and then go back to their own lives, and that is the correct operating model for anything both ambitious and seasonal.