I love the word Kunstkammer- It reminds me of the treasure chests we had in Vermont. I remember the first time I was introduced to the idea of a treasure chest by my friend, Rachel. She was a student at MIT with me. The summer we were working on a film together she was house sitting for another architecture student whose “house” turned out to be the most amazing structure build onto a 30 foot wall in an alley in Beacon Hill in Boston. Each floor was one room and there were 5 “floors” of about 10 by 8 feet each and the stairs to the next floor took up a third of each room. The bathroom was on the ground floor and the kitchen was above it. Then came the living room and above that and the study. The top floor was the bedroom which was a loft bed with a sky light. In one of the rooms there was a glass display case about 2′x 3′ with two shelves and on the shelves were various objects of design interest that the builder of the house had found. For example, there was a particularly elegant screw, a beautiful old glass telephone dome from on top of a telephone pole, a shell, a porcelain door knob, a lovely old brass pull, a sink stopper etc. I was a magical place and I cherish the memory of it. The house it was attached to was sold a few years later and they tore ‘the barnacle house’ down to put on a fancy addition. But it lives on in my memory and in the treasure chests we have filled with our own special ‘finds’.