brass with verdigris · pressed fern · conservatory passage
thin brass, hand-finished, made by a metalworker who also made a smoker for the hives and the brass plate on the front door. the brass is corroding gently in two corners; the conservatory air does that to brass over time. nobody has tried to stop it.
inside, a single fern frond pressed between layers of rag paper. it was cut from the basement fern on a summer morning in the year someone left for good. the frond is the colour of weak tea now and the spores have ghosted onto the paper in a fainter copy of itself.
it hangs at eye height in the short passage between the conservatory and the hall. you smell the green of the room before you see the green of the picture.
field-note the verdigris on the brass is the same green as the dried fern. no one planned it. it is the kind of coincidence the house tends to produce.