Why We Collect
Little pitchers, still affordable and what a story they tell of other times and places. I call my own fascination with collections focused hoarding and I blame my parents who also collected “things” , including smoking pipes, antique beer steins and tea cups. Perhaps it’s a genetic predisposition in many of us? The antithesis of the need to collect seems to be the person bent on shedding every trace of everything he or she ever knew and living basically out of a suitcase which we collectors find very odd. Recently there has been a move afoot to discard everything and live a scaled down minimal life. It’s supposed to make us happy and light and somehow righteous and fulfilled. I disagree completely with that notion, to collect Things is part of the human condition. So why do we collect stuff? Is it a leftover from caveman days? Could it be he-or she--who figured out how to collect the most useful stuff, lived to fight more woolly mammoths and raise children with the same bent...