An anecdote about the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin is the point of departure for the sculpture Gentleman's Traveling Shrine. On his expedition to the Taklamakan desert, Hedin carried with him a year's worth of the newspaper Nya Daglig Allehanda, so he could enjoy his morning tea with a newspaper. The newspaper itself thus became a sort of teleporter and/or time machine, transporting him back to civilization in Sweden.
Gentleman's Traveling Shrine functions in a similar way; as a mystic object which - in spite of pragmatically being completely useless - works as a spiritual anchor-point, a channel back to civilization and the ideas, ideals and values connected to it.