The Collector's Voice: Critical Readings in the Practice of Collecting: Volume 4: Contemporary Voices 4

The Collector’s Voice is a major four-volume project which brings together in accessible form material relevant to the history and practice of collecting in the European tradition from c. 1500 BC to the present day. The series demonstrates how attitudes to objects, the collecting of objects, and the shape of the museum institution have developed over the past 3000 years. Material presented includes translations of a wide range of original documents: letters, official reports, verse, fiction, travellers' accounts, catalogues and labels. Volume 1: Ancient Voices, edited by Susan Pearce and Alexandra Bounia Volume 2: Early Voices, edited by Susan Pearce and Kenneth Arnold Volume 3: Imperial Voices, edited by Susan Pearce and Rosemary Flanders Volume 4: Contemporary Voices, edited by Susan Pearce and Paul Martin Cover 1 Half Title 2 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Table of Contents 6 General preface to series 9 Acknowledgements 12 Introduction 13 I Talk between men and women 24 1 G.S., the butterfly collector 26 2 L.M. and his wife, the Inuit print collectors 29 3 Lou, the strawberry collector 31 4 Randy, the musical instrument collector 34 5 The fridge magnet collector 38 6 The jugs and china pieces collector 41 7 The motor cycle rally badges collector 43 8 The stones and rocks collector 45 9 The Hornby Collectors Club 47 10 A walk down Lilliput Lane 50 11 Collecting food and drink 53 12 Sad find of a birds' egg collector 58 13 Collecting as underground activity 60 II Consuming voices 64 14 Metal detectorists and treasure hunters 66 15 Magazines for collectors 69 16 Children's leagues, rings, clubs and circles 72 17 Collectors find guidance: the Robertson's Golly Handbook 77 18 The consuming media 81 19 Clubbing together: the Clarice Cliff Collectors Club 86 20 Collectors' clubs as commercial venture 89 21 Dealing 93 22 The People's Show: towards a more democratic museum? 96 23 Club collects new members 101 24 Collectors on the Internet 104 25 The Corgi Heritage Centre 109 III Talking collectables 114 26 Don't ask why, just put a lid on it: Tupperware 116 27 A search for identity in antiques markets 120 28 Make the most of car-boot sales 124 29 £100m sector feeds our past to the addicts 128 30 A symphony of shimmering beauty 131 31 Eggberts: a nest full of funny collectables 135 32 Beanie Baby update 138 33 Welcome to McDonald's 141 34 Exclusive first editions subscriber offer 146 35 Under the counter 150 36 Star Wars 154 37 Sell it while it's hot, collect it when it's not 157 IV Collecting stories 162 38 J.R.R. Tolkien: The Silmarillion 164 39 Patricia Wentworth: The Brading Collection, and Michael Innes: A Connoisseur's Case 167 40 John Fowles: The Collector 173 41 Georges Perec: Things 176 42 Yury Dombrovsky: The Keeper of Antiquities 180 43 Brian Moore: The Great Victorian Collection 184 44 Judith Krantz: Scruples 189 45 Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum 194 46 Barbara Pym: Quartet in Autumn 200 47 Bruce Chatwin: Utz 205 48 A.S. Byatt: Morpho Eugenia 209 49 Kate Atkinson: Behind the Scenes of the Museum 213 50 Tibor Fischer: The Collector Collector 216 51 Patricia Cornwell: Point of Origin 219 V Discourses of possibility 224 52 Mr Opie's obsession 226 53 Vorsprung Durch shopping 231 54 London's Toy Museum to be broken up 238 55 The 'Lite fantastic' 241 56 For your amusement 245 57 Second World War's modern-day hero 250 58 Written on the body 254 59 The numbers game 266 60 Beach gems power revival of jet age in Whitby 270 61 Q: It began in the UK. Then the Americans bought up all the talent. What is it? 273 62 Stars of light 278 63 All our yesterdays 284 VI Future voices 290 64 Ward Harrison: celebrity scavenger 292 65 Historians agog over can labels 296 66 Victorian harvest of history 299 67 Doll collector for seventy years 302 68 Some correspondence with spoon collectors 305 69 Badges discovery gave restaurateur food for thought 308 70 'Collected' 311 71 'Maybe' at the Serpentine 316 72 Artistic interventions 319 73 Massacre at Wounded Knee 322 74 Collecting as news 325 75 Time capsules: collecting for the Millennium 329 Bibliography 334 Index 342 The Collector's Voice is a major four-volume project which brings together in accessible form material relevant to the history and practice of collecting in the European tradition from c. 1500 BC to the present day. The series demonstrates how attitudes to objects, the collecting of objects, and the shape of the museum institution have developed over the past 3000 years. Material presented includes translations of a wide range of original documents: letters, official reports, verse, fiction, travellers' accounts, catalogues and labels. * Volume 1: Ancient Voices, edited by Susan Pearce and Alexandra Bounia * Volume 2: Early Voices, edited by Susan Pearce and Kenneth Arnold * Volume 3: Modern Voices, edited by Susan Pearce and Rosemary Flanders * Volume 4: Contemporary Voices, edited by Susan Pearce and Paul Martin Author Biography: Susan Pearce, Professor, Dean of Faculty of Arts, University of Leicester and Paul Martin, Lecturer in History, Ruskin College, Oxford, UK. Last summer I was out collecting with three friends who are all botanists but one of them was a student taking an entomology course so we were walking along on this mountain trail near Chilliwack somewhere and this little wasp-like thing flew by which anybody else would have said, Oh, it's a little bee or something, and it's actually a moth that mimics wasps. v. 1. Ancient voices / edited by Susan Pearce and Alexandra Bounia v. 3. Imperial voices / edited by Susan Pearce ... [et al.] v. 4. Contemporary voices / edited by Susan Pearce and Paul Martin.