Sicilian ceramicists have been painting suns with faces for about four hundred years, and not once have they made the sun look pleased about it. Slightly stern. Faintly amused. Rays like knives.

We surrounded ours with lemons, oranges and blossom, then laid the lot on the diagonal, the way tiles run across a courtyard in Caltagirone. Four of the suns have the MA cipher sitting at their centre.