WHAT CONDITION THE CONDITION IS IN: AS IS. Not film tested. This Kodak Brownie 44A is in remarkably good condition for its age. Perfect candidate for display, maybe even shooting. Scroll down to learn why this camera thinks it’s remarkable. Spoiler: it has a point.

The Kodak Brownie 44A* is a palm-sized marvel of 1960s British ingenuity that somehow convinced an entire generation it could make them artists. Born from the unlikely alliance of Dr. F.H.G. Pitt and industrial designer Kenneth Grange, this little black plastic box won a Design Award in 1960.

It asks almost nothing of you: one of two aperture settings, a 1/40-second shutter that fires with the satisfying snap of someone making a decision they'll never regret, and a curved film plane quietly performing optical miracles so your edges stay sharp even when your intentions aren't.

The polythene Ever-Ready cover (integral, flexible, vaguely optimistic) was designed to protect the lens without the indignity of a separate case.

Many were made; some covers grew brittle, as protective things often do; intact specimens are now rare. But in the right hands and the right light, it's a small and lovely thing.

*The 44A was born at the 1958 Brussels World Fair, where Kenneth Grange, a man apparently constitutionally incapable of designing anything ugly, met Kodak's Dr. F.H.G. Pitt, who understood optics the way most of us understand breathing. One brought beauty; the other brought science; together they produced a camera that won a 1960 Design Centre Award and launched a twenty-year partnership. Proof, if any were needed, that the right two people in the right room can occasionally produce something rather better than a committee.