Question: I can definitely remember the series showing us animals being transfigured into objects, but what about the reverse? Do the books give us any examples?

Answer: 
**Yes.**

McGonagall uses this type of transfiguration as a demonstration in her first lesson in PS/SS:

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> Then she changed her desk into a pig and back again. They were all very impressed and couldn't wait to get started, but soon realised they weren't going to be changing the furniture into animals for a long time.
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Cedric does it to get the egg from the dragon in GoF, according to Ron:

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> “Cedric did this weird thing where he Transfigured a rock on the ground ... turned it into a dog ... he was trying to make the dragon go for the dog instead of him.”
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We see Voldemort using this type of magic during OotP:

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> For a moment, it seemed Dumbledore had won, but then the fiery rope became a serpent, which relinquished its hold upon Voldemort at once and turned, hissing furiously, to face Dumbledore.
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Fudge uses it to prove to the Muggle Prime Minister that he’s a wizard in HBP (see also a [fuller excerpt](https://hpmedia.bloomsbury.com/rep/files/harry-potter-and-the-half-blood-prince-extract.pdf)):

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> And he had turned the Prime Minister’s teacup into a gerbil.
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### Yes, turning objects into animals is possible.

It is indeed possible to turn an inanimate object into an animal. It is not a uniquely difficult branch of magic, as turning a teapot into a tortoise is covered in Hogwarts’s third year Transfiguration class.

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> “The third-years emerged from Transfiguration at lunch-time on Monday limp and ashen-faced, comparing results and bemoaning the difficulty of the tasks they had been set, which had included turning a teapot into a tortoise. Hermione irritated the rest by fussing about how her tortoise had looked more like a turtle, which was the least of everyone else’s worries.
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> ‘Mine still had a spout for a tail, what a nightmare …’
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> ‘Were the tortoises supposed to breathe steam?’
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> ‘It still had a willow-patterned shell, d’you think that’ll count against me?”   
> *- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Chapter 16 (Professor Trelawney’s Prediction)*
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While this class of third-years did have some difficulty doing the transformation successfully, at least one student (Hermione) was successful in hers, and it being in the curriculum indicates that it is considered a spell that a third-year student would be able to perform effectively with practice.