Llavero Patoruzu

Patoruzú has been part of Argentine popular culture since the late 1920s, when Dante Quinterno's Tehuelche giant first turned up in the newspapers: immensely strong, hopelessly generous with his money, and permanently baffled by city life in Buenos Aires. This keyring takes that famous outline and turns it into something you can carry about on a set of keys. Character keyrings live or die on silhouette, and this one has an easy job of it, since the profile is distinctive enough to be recognised instantly by anyone who grew up with the strips or the annuals. A single-file print, which makes it an obvious small gift for an Argentine friend, for family living abroad, or for the sort of person who still keeps a battered Patoruzú collection on a shelf. Leave the relief to do the work, or hand it to a painter and let them treat it as a very small canvas.