Bellaro Ornament

The Bellaro Ornament is a single cherry blown up to the size of a small melon, then hand-painted all over with more cherries. The body is high-fired ceramic in the full, heart-like shape of the fruit, glazed white and covered in rows of small red cherries on thin green stems, with fine green lines running around it like the bands on an old fruit bowl. From the dimple at the top rises one long, curved brass stem, bent the way a real cherry stem arcs, and it ends in a small knotted tip where the fruit would have hung from the branch. The joke is in the repeat: one big cherry made of little ones, with a real metal stem to finish it.