Nothing rare is required. These are small domestic objects with enough history to keep me curious.
The dark wooden case has a pale patch where a small ornament must have stood for years. I have left that mark alone. The round dial sits a little high in the door, which gives the clock a permanently attentive expression. It was the loose hinge that first brought it to my desk; the drawings I made then are still the first pages in the bench book. On a quiet morning, its tick is the sound I notice while opening the curtains.
This one arrived with a scratched back and a handle that leaned to one side. It is cheerful in a determined sort of way. The alarm is far too enthusiastic for my bedside, so the clock lives on a shelf in the workroom instead. I made a paper outline of its hands before doing anything else, and the drawing still looks like a tiny pair of scissors. It reminds me that an ordinary object can have a very particular character.
The little kitchen timer is the least impressive object in the group and perhaps the easiest to like. Its pointer sits slightly off-centre, and the painted numbers are worn where fingers have turned it most often. I keep it with the clocks because it belongs to the same domestic world: small mechanisms asked to do the same job, day after day. The note beside it in my book is only three lines long, but I know exactly which object those lines describe.
See how the first record begins