Cha-Ching!

Doors, windows, crates, drawers, parentheses: these are all things that must either be open or closed. A penny bank is neither open nor closed. Its fundamental feature, without which it could never exist, is the slot, the fissure. That slot is a one-way device that regulates the transit of coins, relieving them of their temptation to scatter and channeling them into a hidden life, a cloistered or quarantined existence. They can only manifest their presence with the faintest of musical sounds, not unlike maracas. A life destined to last only until the moment the penny bank itself is destroyed, shattered to dust. But as is the way with the happy spirits haunting old houses, a few always survive to bear witness: and so it is with the penny banks you see here, part of the collection of Turin’s Museo del Risparmio (Savings Museum).