Ordinary objects lead extraordinary lives. We simply write them down. Welcome to the only gallery where the stapler gets the spotlight it always deserved.
Your desk is not furniture. It is a crowd of veterans. The pen that signed a lease and then a divorce. The lanyard that opened 11 different badge readers. The umbrella that has been forgotten in four restaurants and always, somehow, came back.
Products With Story is a catalogue of these quiet heroes. None of the stories below are true. All of them feel like they could be. Nothing here is for sale, because you cannot put a price on a mug that has heard every quarterly forecast since 2009.
White ceramic, chipped at the rim, faint ring of a coffee from the previous decade. It has attended every weekly sync, every all-hands and one offsite in a castle. It was present when the word "synergy" was used without irony for the last time.
It has never once been invited. It simply came, held by someone who needed it. It has outlasted four logos, two reorganisations and a ping-pong table.
Every object on your desk has a past it will never tell you. Our Provenance Engine reconstructs it in one click. Entirely invented, entirely in your browser, entirely plausible.
Type the name of something near you, then press the button. Its secret life will appear here.
Before you throw it away, ask what it has seen.
Then throw it away anyway, if it is broken. But with respect.