I was conversing with a neighbour this morning, who’s just moved into a new house a whole block and a half away from the house she used to live in. We were discussing gardening (I have an established garden, she’s planning what to do with her handkerchief of a courtyard).
We moved from admiring remarks about the garden of the house across the road from her new house, to her mentioning how that gardener’s brother used to be the now-deceased guy in the next street who always had “rescued” scrap-merchant type stuff tied to a roofrack on his car, to discussing the obsessive collector phenomenon in general. We spoke of those people who end up building a home extension just so that they have room to “properly” display their collection of teapots, or those who devote a whole spare room to a model train layout (the only type of collector with whom mr tog has any sympathy).
I mentioned that at one time I collected figurines and artwork of dragons, but I’d got to the stage where I didn’t want any more and people kept giving them to me (often sadly kitschy cute ones that weren’t my style at all to boot). My sister got the same with with her once upon a time owl collection – she just got over it. After all, they just collect dust and take up space that could be used for other things.
My neighbour said she ended up with a collection she never even wanted at all, just from people’s assumptions. A friend once gave her a little set of African animal figurines as a thank-you gift which she decided to display on the mantelpiece. The next time her birthday came around, she got about 5 different small animals from people “to add to your collection”. 10 years later, there was no room on the mantel for anything but miniature animal figurines, none of which she had ever wanted, and many of which (unlike the original African figurines) were appallingly lacking in actual artistic value. She’s very happy that the new house has no mantelpiece (no fireplace).
We decided that this was the Law of Unintended Multiplication – if people think you are a collector of a certain thing, then they tend to give you more of it than you ever expected to own.
In light of his discovery of this Law, mr tog would like to make it known that he has begun a Maserati collection.
Mr tog can bloody well queue up after me, unless someone gives me a broken one, in which case he would be welcome to it. The reason we own the car we do nowadays is because Mrs VVB got sick of me spending every single weekend under the car, back in the days when I owned unreliable ones.
Whoo, owl collection. The horrible ones are packed in a box, the goodies hover around the bookcase. The pottery bears are looking over my shoulder and they’re too cute to lock up. But, I have just broken with one obssesive collection, my jam jars went in the recycle bin last week and it was joy to hear the crashing of glass in the garbage truck. Now I just have to work on bypassing every op-shop without having a panic attack that I might be missing some treasure I can’t do without.
I’m reading a book at the moment, (which I bought for my work, not just because I can’t help myself in the prescence of art books) which reproduces a small portion of a man’s music poster collection. His daughters, incidentally, went to my primary school so I remember their slightly chaotic house full o’stuff. One of them wrote the introduction, and cited a childhood surrounded by posters (and other collected stuff). Her Dad confesses that having won money on the Caulfield Cup one year his wife and daughters thought they should buy a house. What they got was posters.
So I am less troubled by the people who renovate to accommodate the collection, obviously they aren’t spending every cent on the collectable. My brother would probably add that at least they don’t expect their relatives to carry their collection from one house to the next.
I collect wood type, and ANYONE is welcome to send me any of that they find. There’s someone in Melbourne who makes sculptures from it, and every time I see one I want to cry. If I ever get one of those I’ll be doing a bit of hammer and chisel work to release the individual pieces!