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This paper challenges superficial views of ‘recyclia’ (or recycled art) so to consider more conceptual, holistic perspectives. In questioning how the ‘cultural and visual art world’ invests a new imagination and creativity onto abandoned possessions and derelict artefacts, the paper explores the recovery of social memory and the recycling of the past. With an emphasis on the conversion of Cornish shipping and fishing artefacts into recyclia and recycled narrative, the paper thus addresses the recycling of identities, histories and social relations. It does so from an interdisciplinary approach grounded in social anthropology, human geography and material culture studies. My main concern is to map out the journeys that certain tangible markers of prosperity and socio‐economic hardship take through official and low‐key recycling initiatives. Hence, the aim is to look at how Cornwall's historically significant nautical relics and waste are transformed into works of art and therefore into solid metaphors of cultural distinction. In this way, issues pertaining to cultural resurgence are knotted into the creative production for an ‘afterlife’ of things. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]