First Temptation

The starting point for this theme was a late-night rereading of Milton's Paradise Lost—not from religious impulse, but from being struck by that will to "move forward knowing one will fall." I wanted to create a set of nails that lets the wearer decide whether to bite the apple. Pearl Water Surface is my private obsession: as a child, I saw an ancient well in a southern temple, and in moonlight I thought there was another world inside. That memory of "water surface as threshold" became the underlying structure of this set. The gold chosen is aged gold, because sacredness too new resembles a prop; the serpent must be white, because danger sometimes wears the face of purity. I deliberately controlled the apple count on each design to between one and three—too many becomes a fruit stand, too few loses the narrative anchor. I hope that after you wear them, in some moment of raising your hand, you suddenly understand why the Eden story continues to be told after millennia.