The universe of puppetry is more vast than the human imagination. That’s why its images hold such power: they reach into the unconscious, the unknown and unknowable zone beyond words—the empty space before the play begins, when anything can emerge from darkness; what the ancient Greeks called the apeiron, the unbounded.

Whether it was The New Yorker or The Economist or the TLS I don’t recall, but I was reading one of those improving journals one night in my loft with my dog beside me on the couch when an idea strayed into my mind.

Bruno Leone was studying to become an architect when he met Pulcinella, and that encounter changed his life. It’s a love story, but not a human one, since Pulcinella is a hand puppet of the Neopolitian streets and squares. The one remaining master puppeteer of that ancient tradition was close to retirement when Leone came along—and he had no successor.

I was the last car in the slowest line and the ferry from Nova Scotia to Maine had docked more than an hour ago. But the US customs officer took his time – and mine.

When I began this project, I thought that there were four basic types of puppet (hand, rod, string and shadow). Now I know more, and I start in a different place, with bigger categories: objects, masks and puppets. In some ways, objects are the most interesting of the three.