A garden chair looks simple enough. It sits on a terrace, beside a swimming pool, outside a restaurant or in the corner of a family garden. Someone chooses it, pays for it, and eventually sits down. But by the time that chair reaches its final destination, it may already have travelled through factories, international supply chains, warehouses, showrooms, delivery networks and changing seasons. Its design has been influenced by materials, climate, customer behaviour and ideas

A customer transfers money from London to New York. A pharmaceutical company releases a new batch of tablets. An aircraft leaves Heathrow. A construction worker climbs onto scaffolding. A supermarket places food on a shelf. A technology company collects a customer's personal information. These activities appear to belong to completely different industries, yet beneath every one of them sits the same invisible question: are we allowed to do this, and are we doing it in the way

A firearm can mean entirely different things depending on where it is sitting. In a locked cabinet in Switzerland, it may belong to a licensed civilian or sports shooter. In an American gun shop, it is a regulated consumer product passing through a commercial supply chain. In a police armoury, it is state equipment. On a military base, it becomes part of national defence infrastructure. Recovered from a crime scene, the same basic object becomes evidence whose markings, owner