Statuesque and tangibly distant, Miss Balzar seems more a fairytale figure than a knowable friend. It is as if she was hewn from fine marble in the style of old heroes, though her plinth has long since overgrown with ivy and creeping lilies; lost in the arches of a forgotten hall.

This ancient stone has been inlaid and so, in turn, she inlays - brass, mahogany and fine glasswork gild her and, in time, those she meets. Even the air is not left without memento, the ghost of sandalwood smoke lingering in her wake.

But it is more than the storied chisel that keeps her company for she carries with her the promises of faraway and fabled lands. Like offerings hung across a shrine, her strange treasure-tools speak in foreign whispers of a trade stranger still. Travellers have come this way.