Academic literature on the topic 'Collectors and collecting'

Contrary to general traditional belief, the origins of collecting, as a systematic activity that refers to the satisfaction of symbolic rather than actual needs, was not an invention of the Renaissance. Collecting made its first appearance in European prehistory, was a subject of interest and debate for the ancient Greeks and Romans, and has been present continuously ever since. This thesis aims to address a gap in the history of collecting and to contribute to the discussion of its origins and nature through an analysis of collecting in the classical Graeco-Roman world. As a result, the subject of this thesis is the nature of classical collecting as this is illustrated by the works of four Latin authors, M. Tullius Cicero, Gaius Plinius Secundus, M. Valerius Martialis, and T. Petronius Arbiter. This analysis aims to take a long view of the collecting attitudes in the classical world, and trace the seeds of this practice and mentality in a shared tradition that runs through European thought. Consequently, the views on collections and collecting expressed by the four writers are seen within the longer Graeco-Roman tradition, and are approached through four parameters that have been identified as fundamental for structuring the collecting discourse: the notion of the past and the role of material culture as a mediator between people and their perception of it; gift-exchange as a social tradition with deep social roots, that structures relations between people, people and the Gods, and people and material culture; the notion of identity, at a communal and individual level and the capacity of objects to shape and structure it; and finally, the notions of time and space, our understanding and appreciation of which require the mediation of material culture. The discussion of each of those parameters comes together in the four chapters on the Latin authors. The reading of the ancient texts has been influenced by philosophical concerns about issues of interpretation and appropriation, and in particular by the ideas of Barthes and Ricoeur.

Collecting is an activity that stems from humankinds roots as hunters and gathers, when necessity rather than want, was key. This dissertation considers the strategies and motivations behind collecting in the 21st Century and what the significance is of collected objects. It considers the many guises, aims and reasons for collections being made, from the attainment of wealth and status, to the filling of personal voids, or the simple pleasures of belonging to a like-minded group of people. The dissertation charts contemporary influences in collecting behaviour, from an increased interest in celebrity, the push by corporations to market mass-produced collectibles, alternative consumer trends, and what effect the internet has had on the availability of a vast array of objects globally and locally. Back grounded by a diminishing of the earth’s resources and the production of objects at a peak, it considers the notion of futility.

The ambivalence of many prehistorians toward curio collections has meant that, although they recognise some of their shortcomings, they nevertheless use collections as if they had qualities of archaeological assemblages. In this dissertation it is posited and then demonstrated that curio collections are very different entities to archaeological assemblages. In order to use collections in valid constructions of New Zealand�s pre-European past, the processes that led to their formation need to be understood. It is only then that issues of representation can be addressed. In order to better understand the collecting process, a study of the activity of 24 curio collectors who operated in the Murihiku region of southern New Zealand during the period between 1865 and 1975 was undertaken. The study was structured about two key notions: the idea of the �filter� and the idea that tools and ornaments have a �life history� that extends from the time that raw material was selected for the manufacture to the present. The notion of the filter made possible a determination of the effects of particular behaviours on patterns of collector selectivity and the extent and nature of provenance recording; and the extended concept of life history recognised that material culture functions in multiple cultural and chronological contexts-within both indigenous and post-contact spheres. Examination of the collecting process led to the identification of five curio collecting paradigms: curio collecting for the acquisition of social status, curio collecting for financial return, curio collecting as an adjunct to natural history collecting, curio collecting as an adjunct to historical recording, and ethnological or culture-area curio collecting. Filtering processes associated with each paradigm resulted in particular, but not always distinctive, patterns of curio selectivity and styles of provenance recording. A switch in the focus of attention from examination of curio collectng processes generally to the study of the filtering processes that shaped collections from a specific archaeological site-the pre-European Otago Peninsula site of Little Papanui (J44/1)- enabled some evaluation of individuual collection representation. A database recording up to 19 attributes for each of 6282 curios localised to �Little Papanui� in Otago Museum enabled 31 dedicated or �ardent� collectors who operated at the site to be identified. These 31 dedicated collectors were grouped according to the paradigm that best described their collecting behaviour. It was found that the greater proportion of these dedicated collectors (n=12, 39%) had been influenced by the ethnological or culture-area collecting paradigm. These 12 collectors were responsible for recovering a remarkable 5645 curios or nearly ninety-percent (89.86%) of the meta-collection. Because curio collections lack meaningfully recorded stratigraphic provenance, it is the technological and social context in which tools and ornaments functioned that must become the focus of curio collection studies. Appropriate studies of technological and social and context focus upon evaluations of raw material sourcing, evaluations of manufacture technique and assessments of tool and ornament use and reuse (and integrative combinations of these modes of study). These sorts of evaluation require large collections compiled in the least selective manner possible and the collections need to be reliably localised to specific sites. Collections compiled by the ethnological or culture-area collectors have these qualities. Collections compiled within other paradigms lack locality information and were assembled in highly selective manners.

In the second half of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century the collecting of objects from colonized countries and their subsequent display in western museums was widespread throughout Western Europe. How and why these collections were made, the processes of collection, and by whom, has only recently begun to be addressed. This thesis is an exploration of the ethnographic collection of Gertrude Emily Benham (1867-1938) who made eight voyages independently around the world from 1904 until 1938, during which time she amassed a collection of approximately eight hundred objects, which she donated to Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery in 1935. It considers how and why she formed her collection and how, as a an amateur and marginalised collector, she can be located within discourses on ethnographic collecting. The thesis is organised by geographical regions in order to address the different contact zones of colonialism as well as to contextualise Benham within the cultural milieu in which she collected and the global collection of objects that she collected. An interdisciplinary perspective was employed to create a dialogue between anthropology, geography, museology, postcolonial and feminist theory to address the complex issues of colonial collecting. Benham is located within a range of intersecting histories: colonialism, travel, collecting, and gender. This study is the first in-depth examination of Benham as a collector and adds to the knowledge and understanding of Benham and her collection in Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery. It contributes to the discourse on ethnographic collectors and collecting and in doing so it acknowledges the agency and contribution of marginal collectors to resituate them as a central and intrinsic component in the formation of the ethnographic museum. In addition, and central to this, is the agency and role of indigenous people in forming ethnographic collections. The thesis offers a foundation for further research into women ethnographic collectors and a more nuanced and inclusive account of ethnographic collecting.

Humanity's relationship with rocks is a long-standing one. Belk (1995, p.2) describes archaeological evidence of early assemblages of rocks found in Cro-Magnon caves that would not be out of place in contemporary rock-collections. Historically, apart from being used as material for tools and buildings. rocks were also used for magical, pharmaceutical and decorative purposes. During the Renaissance and Enlightenment, the practice of collecting rocks became associated with the sense of discovery and the colonial expansion of western European civilization across world, and with advances in mining, science and industry. It is a practice that continues through to the present day. This thesis is an ethnography that asks contemporary rock collectors: why do they collect rocks? How do they collect rocks? And, how do they talk about them? Adapting Foucault's theoretical framework on discourse (1970) and utilising positions on collecting put forward by Baudrillard ( 1994), Belk ( 1995), Benjamin (1999), and others, the thesis analyses interviews and images of rock-collectors and their collections and puts forward a snapshot of the discourse of rocks and rock-collecting as currently practiced. The thesis's theoretical framework is first tested on texts of popular culture on rocks and rock-collecting to locate and identify the statements and discursive formations that make up the discourse, and then it is applied to the interviews of contemporary collectors talking about their collections. While some rock collectors practice alone and their approaches may appear idiosyncratic, others, sharing knowledge and experience, practice in a club environment. The collectors' approaches to rock collecting range from the taxonomic and scientific to the aesthetic and utilitarian, personal and historical, and, for some, to the metaphysical. In Australia some aspects of rock-collecting are allied to prospecting and mining. For some collectors the rocks are souvenirs, and are connected to travel. For other collectors rock-collecting is associated with understandings of nature, time and space. The interviews reveal that in a consumer society rocks are also commodities, with many of the collectors not only acquiring their rocks in the field, but also buying what they cannot find, or trade, for their collection. The analysis of the collectors' interviews demonstrates that the discourse does not stand as an isolated figure, but shares statements and configurations of statements with many other discourses in the field of knowledge, including science, history, archaeology and metaphysics. The interviews also illustrate how discourse and their associated practices are subject to external and internal rules and regulations, imposed by the State, and by institutions of academia and cultural and scientific practices, such as museums and universities. Some collectors aspire to emulate museums, and wish to share with others knowledge about to their collection through exhibition. The variety of themes and practices found in the interviews reinforce Foucault's proposition that within a discourse statements and configurations of statements may arise that are incompatible and form diffractions in the discourse. While apparently incompatible themes, variations and differences exist within the discourse, the analysis of the interviews and the conclusion of the thesis underscore the underlying unities of the discourse of rocks and rock-collecting.

This thesis examines the portrayal of gentleman collectors in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century literature, arguing that they often find themselves challenged and destabilised by their collections. The collecting depicted contrasts revealingly with the Enlightenment practices of classification, taxonomy, and commodification, associated with the growth of both the public museum and the market economy. The dominance of such practices was bound up with the way they promoted subject-object relations that defined and empowered masculine identity. In the Dialectic of Enlightenment Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer note that “[i]n the most general sense of progressive thought, the Enlightenment has always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their sovereignty” (3). That being so, this study explores how the drive to classify and commodify the material world found oppositional, fictional form in gothicly inflected texts depicting a fascinating but frightening world of unknowable, alien objects and abject, emasculated subjects. The study draws upon Fred Botting’s contention that gothic extremes are a reaction to the “framework” of “reductive and normalising limits of bourgeois morality and modes of production” (89). Examining novels and short stories by Richard Marsh, M.R. James, Arthur Machen, Vernon Lee, George Gissing, Wilkie Collins, Bram Stoker, Mary Cholmondeley, and Mary Ward, the thesis shows how gothicised instances of unproductive-masochism, pathological collecting, thwarted professionals, and emasculated heirs broke down the “framework” within which men and material culture were understood to interact productively and safely. Individual chapters dealing respectively with acquisition, possession, dissemination and inheritance, respond to the recent “material turn” in the humanities, bringing together literary criticism and historically grounded scholarship to reveal the collector and the collection as the locus 3 for concerns with masculinity and materiality that preoccupied a turn-of-the-century mindset.