Tender’s ‘crab apple’ keyrings are lost wax cast in England from solid brass. They are fitted onto a brass-plated steel keyring.

The casting is taken directly from a real crab apple (malus) picked in a friend’s garden. The stem was bent around into a loop, and Tender’s Plautus face is engraved into the base of the apple.

To produce the casting, a real apple was used to make a rubber mould, into which casting wax is poured. The wax is packed in plaster, and molten brass is run in, melting away the wax and hardening inside the plaster. The plaster is then broken away and the pieces are filed and cleaned up.

White bronze is an alloy with a lower copper content than yellow brass, and has a warm, deep silver sheen which will patinate darker over time. The crab apples are polished to a bright shine in a vibrating tub of marble chips, but are not varnished or lacquered, so will patinate and develop even more character as they age.