Chardon

Touch me and you'll be pricked': the thistle has made a motto of its defence, emblem of Scotland as of Lorraine. Yet beneath its spiny bracts hides a flower. Chrystiane Charles has cast the bristling head in gilt or silvered bronze, scale after scale, raised on a stem ringed with serrated leaves. The whole rests on a geometric base. The brass shade crowns it. The light catches the point of each spine and keeps the shadow in the hollow of the plant's heart.