The Frog Lamp With Two Makers

The frog lamp looks as if it has just heard something it intends to repeat. Its chin sticks out under a yellow shade, and its glazed toes curl around the edge of a folding table. You reach for the price tag. Someone across the aisle calls, “Oh, you’ve found my frog.”

The woman behind the folding table looks up. “Your frog?”

“I cast that one,” says the man across the aisle, coming over with a paper cup in his hand. “I remember the feet.”

“I made it from scratch,” the woman says. “I was up half the night finishing it.”

Beside you, Pippa Ternwick stops halfway through a cinnamon twist. She looks from the man to the woman, then down at the frog.

“How nice for it,” she says. “Most of us only get one origin story.”

Saturday is warm enough that the stallholders have tied their awnings back. The sun makes a little yellow square on the frog’s head. You were meant to buy your sister a housewarming plant. The longer you look at the lamp, the harder it is to imagine arriving with a fern.

Turn it over

“May we?” Pippa asks. The woman nods. Pippa cups the shade while you lift the base. Under the glaze, between two felt pads, is a small backward 7. You’d have missed it if Pippa hadn’t tilted the frog toward the aisle.

The man sets down his coffee and fishes a photo out of a tin of spare change. It shows a workshop bench, a chipped mug and a frog-shaped casting lying belly-up. Someone has written a date in the white border. Pippa turns the photo so you can see the underside of the casting, then sets it on the table without a word.

“Mine’s here,” says the woman. She draws the cord out from under a box of table linens. A folded repair label hangs from it on a loop of string. She flattens the label with her thumb, then pulls her hand away. There’s a little row for work carried out. The end of the writing runs under the fold.

Two maker tags hang from the neck of the lamp. One is tied with red string and the other with green. Pippa turns both over. The red tag says it was cast at one stall. The green tag says it was made from scratch at the other. Neither has a date.

From the far gate comes the bell for the last half hour. The man gets his coffee. The woman finds the frog’s price tag under a stack of saucers and holds it out to you. Pippa turns over a blank swing tag of her own.

“I can think of three good places to start,” she says. “The photo, the repair label, or the very confident tags. Which one do you want to ask about first?”

Play the case

Open the case with Pippa Ternwick and ask to start the frog lamp case. Choose your first clue. Bring a theory if you have one.

Before you go, jot down one thing you’d put on the frog’s tag and one thing you’d leave blank. See if either changes once you’ve asked your question.