“If you asked a child to sketch what their fantasy chair or bed looked like, they might draw something that looks like an Oculus product,” says Alfie di Trolio, who deals vintage furniture and objects under the name Oculus and works as a set designer in London. It’s a pretty perfect description of the pieces he seeks out for selling — handmade, imperfect, a little wonky and weird. “They’re functional pieces but there’s something super decorative and super silly; often the scale is a bit more exaggerated than it needs to be,” he adds. Guided mostly by intuition, di Trolio gravitates toward metal work, specifically wrought iron, which allows for “these overblown, extravagant forms.” Weighty wooden pieces are hardly out of the question, though, like “chunky old cabinets where you feel like someone’s chopped down a tree and carved inside.” So, what makes for an Oculus object? There’s a feeling of excitement di Trolio gets, a tumbling curiosity around how the object came to be. “It’s like, I can’t imagine who made you! What were they doing? Were they in therapy?"