Vintage Speedboat Ornament

Here, and the test for a well made one is whether the hull is finished on the side that faces the wall. Most are not. Ours carries its waterline the whole way around and its deck seams brushed on one at a time. My aunt Lucinda checked the back of hers before she looked at the front. She restores boats.

It is, and it tends to produce the trade that happens outside the rules. Somebody with no claim on it offers something for it mid-round, the swap pauses while everybody watches, and the pair shake on it. Nobody ever reverses that trade at the end of the game. Lucinda has been on both sides of one. She kept the boat.

Yes, for anybody who has owned a boat, worked on a boat, or talked at length about a boat they intend to buy. The last group is larger than the first two combined. Lucinda gave one to a man who has been about to buy a boat since 2009 and reports that he was visibly moved. He has still not bought one.

Blown glass, hand-painted, with a mahogany-toned hull, a chrome-effect windshield and white spray worked into the stern. The deck stripes are laid on individually, which is slower than masking and the only way they follow the curve of the hull properly. Lucinda asked what the stripes had been masked with and was pleased to be told nothing at all.

It measures 1.38 inches wide and 3.94 inches tall, so it is narrow and upright rather than long and low, and it hangs bow-up on the loop. That shape is useful, because it fits the vertical gaps between round ornaments where nothing else will go. Lucinda measured the gap first and bought the ornament second. Apparently that is the correct order.

Wrap the bow and the windshield separately, since both stand proud of the hull and will take any knock first. Then pack it upright rather than on its side, which keeps the weight over the strongest part of the form. Lucinda stores hers inside a fitted cover she made, at roughly a fortieth of the scale of the other one. She enjoys the symmetry.

We do, and the collection runs to landmarks, vehicles and coastlines. This is the only one that moves across water, which makes it the odd entry in a group otherwise built for roads and skylines. Lucinda considers everything else in the range to be land transport and therefore a compromise. She has held that view for years.

It ships in protective transit packaging designed to get a narrow glass hull through the postal system intact, which is a different job from presentation. Nothing about it is wrapped for handing over directly. Lucinda opened hers at the kitchen table with a knife and considerable ceremony, then complained that the packaging had been excessive. It had worked.