Malus

In autumn the sky over the garden turns red before it goes dark, and for an hour everything stands in that light. It falls sideways onto the apples. The skin takes it and gives it back in pieces — red here, rust there, something almost pink where the sun has been longest — and the colour shifts as you turn the fruit. That is why the sapphires are not matched. Red, raspberry, orange, scattered the way the light scatters on the skin.

The apple itself is eighteen millimetres across. The Milium ground is placed one dot at a time by hand, and the ground curves away under the tool the whole way round, so the angle changes with every mark. There is no shortcut for it. There is only the number of hours.

The leaf and the stem are rose gold, and the stem is set with brown diamonds. The piece hangs from the stem, the way the fruit hung from the branch.

The apple opens, and then it closes. What you put inside is yours.