Tell us about your collection. What kinds of objects and trinkets have you accumulated? The majority of my collection is made up of thumb-sized objects that I’ve acquired in a variety of ways. Friends give them to me; my grandma passes her own pieces down; and sometimes I’ll spot something special in an antique shop and bring it home. But my favourite finds are the ones I literally stumble across on the ground. They always feel like little gifts from the universe, like a tiny reward for surviving another day: “Here, have something that’ll make you smile.” Every bottle cap, toy and die has its own memory attached. Some of my mini-collections include over 50 vintage dice, a growing family of miniature screwdrivers (I think I’m up to six), stone-carved animals, and keys whose locks remain a mystery. Outside of the minis, I also collect taxidermy and bones, antique mink furs and Ordovician fossils.

How do you come across items without searching for them? It’s still kind of a mystery, even to me, but I’ve always found that if I focus on the cracks in the sidewalk and the corners of buildings, there’s always something hiding back there. It’s impossible for humans not to leave traces of ourselves in every crack of the world. Things get lost, forgotten and thrown away, but they don’t disappear. I’ve always loved the saying “one person’s trash is another’s treasure,” because that’s exactly what I’m drawn to. These little lost things must have mattered to someone at some point, no matter how insignificant they seem.

How big is your collection? Shockingly, it doesn’t take up much space. Most pieces are tiny, so anything not currently on display lives in those plastic modular screw organisers that dads keep in their garages. I have four of those filled with what most people would consider junk, all tucked inside my ‘studio’, which is really just a Harry-Potter-under-the-stairs walk-in closet that I shoved a desk and chair into. When I moved houses this summer, my entire collection fit into two medium-sized moving boxes.

How do you sort and store all of these items? Organisation is one of my favourite parts of collecting and, without structure, it turns into hoarding pretty quickly. My most sentimental storage pieces are two vintage letterpress trays my grandma gave me. She used them for her own trinkets and I’ve inherited a lot of her tiny treasures that still get displayed on them (apparently trinket-collecting is genetic). People often describe my room as a “personal museum” because there’s something to look at on every wall and surface: my art, my friends’ art, and about a thousand little objects arranged in trays, bowls and shelves. Everything has a spot. I rotate pieces in and out of display all the time, but some things like rocks, bones and tiny ceramics have been out since I was a kid.

To read the rest of this story and learn more about Reilly Dolan's collection, nab a copy of issue 130 at the frankie shop or visit one of our lovely stockists. For future issues, subscribe here.