English Golden Brown Eye by Robert Elsdale

An eye built from small blocks of wood, staring back without blinking.

Golden Brown Eye is a contemporary work by Robert Elsdale, from England, United Kingdom, in lacquered pigmented wood. End grain, the face cut across a board's growth, takes pigment unevenly and shows its pores and rings, and makers have long pieced it into parquetry and mosaic for exactly that variety. Small rectangles of pale wood radiate from a dark pupil, shading from deep brown at the center to gold and back to brown at the rim, much as a real iris does. A glossy lacquer coat pulls the whole round together. It is 16 inches in diameter.

Hard to say who is admiring whom.