When I first laid eyes on the circus clown trunk, I froze for a moment. The hand-drawn clown staring upside down across the front felt like more than decoration. It felt like a fragment of a lost world — an old fairground life. Old storage boxes aren’t just places to keep things. They’re time capsules. Before cheap mass storage appeared, trunks were the way people travelled. Built solid, heavy duty, sometimes decorated with brass corners or painted lettering. I can’t forget when the circus came to town once a year.

Posters glued to walls promised elephants, fire breathers, acrobats — and always clowns. Looking at the art station trunk feels like it was there backstage, stuffed with costumes and props, waiting for the show to begin.