“Objects have voices and personalities,” Mr. Bofferding said one recent afternoon. Seated behind a 1920s desk by Ernest Boiceau, he was wearing a woolen Paul Stuart sports jacket and a crisp white Charvet shirt. “I can remember, as a child, endowing inanimate things with the qualities of a human being,” he continued. “I recall being uneasy when my mother put water in a pot to boil.”