What is the relationship between visual richness and material wealth? What gives objects in this world the value that they do? These imitation pearls were found on the beach, scattered and abandoned, but glittering proudly in the sunshine as though worth a million dollars. We picked them up and brought them home. Blown up huge in a painting, they might pass for real ones; beyond the illusion of form, what makes things “of value”; what makes something “real”?