This article is about a particular kind of object: “unwritten” or non-textual objects, not created as records, but which have somehow found their way into archival repositories. These include textiles, painting, sculpture, and other works more often associated with museum collections but also encountered in archives. The article’s analysis considers, first, the effect of an archive on these objects—what happens, conceptually, to non-textual records integrated into an archive’s ostensibly textual environment? Second, it considers the effect of such unwritten objects on an archive itself, in its own capacity as a representation. These two lines of inquiry together contribute to understanding how an object’s meaning can be constructed by different kinds of institutions, as well as how different kinds of objects affect the production of historical knowledge.