Bart Keychain Lithophane

A lithophane carries its picture in thickness rather than surface relief, which is why this one looks like a plain panel in the hand and only turns into a face when you hold it up to a window or a phone torch. That reveal is the entire trick, and it is why the technique has outlived the Victorian porcelain plaques it started on. The subject is the spike-haired troublemaker from television's best-known animated family — a face built from so few strong shapes that it survives the translation into light and shade completely intact, which not every portrait does. As a keyring it works as a novelty gift for a fan, an easy way into lithophanes for anyone who has never made one, and the sort of small object that gets passed round a table because everybody wants a go at holding it up to the light.