The best camera ornament to buy is one that a photographer would recognize as a real body rather than a vague rectangle with a circle on it, and Chive's hand-blown glass version passes that test at over three inches across. The form is worked at the furnace into the squat proportions of a vintage rangefinder, with a top plate that steps upward at the viewfinder hump and a front face dominated by a painted lens ring with enough concentric detail to suggest focal-length markings. The shutter button is a single silver dot placed on the top plate with positional accuracy that the painter verified against a reference photograph pinned to the workstation wall. Film-advance and rewind knobs are painted as raised circles on opposite ends of the body. The leather-grip texture is a stippled pattern applied with a dry brush at low pressure. An ornament built with this fidelity to the original belongs at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where concert photography is honored alongside the artists it documented.
