Forbidden Fruit (click to see full collection)
Oxidized brass pendant with a soft dark golden glow is 1 3/8" x 1 1/4". Sterling silver chain is 18" long.
This apple pendant is part of my Forbidden Fruit series, which includes four fruits meaningful to many cultures throughout history.
It was mentioned in Homer's Odyssey as a vital part of Alcinous' royal garden:
"Therein grow trees, tall and luxuriant, pears and pomegranates and apple-trees with their bright fruit, and sweet figs, and luxuriant olives. Of these the fruit perishes not nor fails in winter or in summer, but lasts throughout the year; and ever does the west wind, as it blows, quicken to life some plants and ripen others; pear upon pear waxes and ripens, apple upon apple, cluster upon cluster, and fig upon fig..."
Out of all four fruits, the apple is perhaps laden with the most meaning in the West. Used in art and literature as the symbol for love and beauty (the goddess Venus is often shown cupping an apple) but also for intellectual and sexual knowledge.
Get one for the apple of your eye! If Atalanta, Athena, Hera and Aphrodite couldn't resist, who could?
