About the work

A closer look.

Send me one thing you keep: an object, a place, a photograph, a name, a story. I check what the record says against the thing itself, and I write the one line on why it survives. You get a written page with the image and the line, ready to point at. Ten kept things so far: a blue-hour railway station in Austria, a wax portrait medallion from the 1780s, Chopin's grave, a mourning ring paid for out of its wearer's estate, a broken pilgrim's badge thrown away in 1538, and the oldest surviving piano in the world. If you have the photo, send it. If you only have a name or a sentence, that is enough to start. One revision included.