Curator Jill Tsai put together a fascinating collection of over 300 items, collected from 20 years of travelling the world, on display within Brixton Library at the weekend.

I love random collections of anything to pore over, especially when fond memories of travel are conjured up alongside desires to explore foreign countries.
Just like these emotions, some items were deliberately paired together to ‘explore the cultural translations between them’. The similarities and the differences could be compared, trying to understand what this might mean in the context of their origin and the people who would have used them.

This kind of archive justifies my own collection of random bits and celebrates the ordinary, while inspiring discovery and appreciation of the power and meaning of everyday objects. Distant cultures can be brought closer through this understanding, through the stories of each item.

As well as sparking wanderlust, I suppose it also made me yearn for the past; flicking through a Bulgarian bank savings book or a rent book from Liverpool or seeing the packaging design from earlier eras, that I’m always drawn to; light bulb boxes, some magnificent milk cartons, a beautifully simple hair-dryer box design and a Taiwanese puncture repair kit.

In the style of jumping on a train as it chugs out the station, I just caught the final half hour, when I could have happily spent hours considering each object.

See more of this collection and find out more on the Travel Things website or follow them on Instagram.