Archetypes, of course, are the basis of Allen’s Reality line, which started with the pig but progressed into desk sets cast from generic office supplies, fruit bowls made of fruit, and candles in the shape of standard light bulbs. “That process is interesting because it’s made me look at how things register on the brain,” he says. “A lot of the objects I was casting were from my family, but I was like, what makes these candlesticks important to anyone but me? So I once attempted to turn a Ken Weber Art Deco clock from the Wolfsonian’s collection into a digital alarm. I liked that it had provenence, but a year and a half later we realized it didn’t even look like a clock. It was a beautiful object, but it wouldn’t have that immediate read to people. After all that work, it wasn’t clocky enough.”