Objects are rich sources of inquiry; they invite individuals to observe closely, pose questions, forge connections, and anchor ideas in the concrete. By examining a son's craft project, a family photograph, and an image of tectonic plates, the authors demonstrate how objects can elicit rhetorical invention. While this venture started as a writing experiment (some might claim a self-indulgent one), the activity itself and resulting pieces raise larger questions about the nature of writing and the assignments the authors give to their students. Conventional wisdom casts composition as meeting rhetorical situations or extending delineated subject matters or scholarly traditions. Their approach flouted that convention by identifying objects first, then seeing what they could make of them. The authors found that beginning with evocative objects rather than with, for example, a problem or issue indeed provoked observations and feelings, associations and questions they likely would not have produced through other means. They propose their modest method as at least an occasional practice in composition scholarship and in composition classrooms. (Contains 16 figures and 5 notes.)