# Four Wrong-Sized Objects in a Paris Studio, Ranked by Minutes Survived

Elias Quaintrelle filmed a giant teaspoon, a doll-sized stool, a bucket of a cup and a half-size umbrella. Then he made visitors use them, with a timer.

By Desmond Achterberg · 2026-11-01 · Design · Paris

Elias Quaintrelle keeps an orange kitchen timer on a hook by the door. He sets it when you sit down.

The studio is on rue de Charonne, ground floor, courtyard side. Four objects stand on a trestle table. Each is a normal thing in the wrong size. He has filmed all of them for a documentary series he declines to name. Nobody has been asked to endure them for more than an hour. Worst first.

4. The teaspoon. 38 centimetres long. The bowl holds a small ladle of yoghurt. Forty seconds. The spoon goes in fine. The mouth does not go with it. A neighbour who sells knives gave up at the first attempt and ate the yoghurt with her fingers.

3. The stool. 19 centimetres high, seat the size of a saucer. Two minutes ten. Your knees reach your ears before you reach the seat. Quaintrelle sat on it for four minutes himself, for the film. He needed the wall to stand up.

2. The coffee cup. Two litres. The handle is a proper handle. Nine minutes. The coffee is cold by minute six and you are still on the first third. It is a good cup. It is a bad morning.

1. The umbrella. Half the normal size, 41 centimetres across. Forty-seven minutes, in drizzle, on the pavement outside. It covers one head and nothing else. You walk like a person carrying a secret. The rain found the shoulders, but nobody complained about the shoulders.

Quaintrelle says the umbrella wins because it is wrong in only one direction. The spoon is wrong in all of them. He says this without looking up from the timer.

The umbrella now hangs on the hook beside it. I asked how long I had for the interview. He turned the dial to eleven.

Source: https://oddy.one/a/2026-11-01-four-wrong-sized-objects-in-a-paris-studio-ranked-by-minutes-survived/