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Psychologists call this —a subset of compulsive hoarding or collectorship. But the chronicles suggest something stranger. These individuals do not merely want to own the artifact. They want to absorb its history, its age, its silent witness to centuries. The desire is not for wealth, but for coherence —the belief that holding the object will make one’s fragmented life as enduring as carved granite.
In 2018, a 17-year-old student tripped (or so he claimed) and shattered two 17th-century Chinese porcelain jars. But CCTV showed he had deliberately lunged. In his online diary, later recovered, he wrote: "The perfect blue and white was a lie. My life is cracked. I made the jar honest." The Chronicles of Peculiar Desires in the Briti...