Friday 14 October 2011

collecting things

Day 30 of Lisa Congdon's amazing A Collection A Day 2010 project

I am a hoarder of things. I just can't help it: I don't like to throw things away. It comes from my mother. She was born during WWII in England and grew up with rationing. It was hard to get things: food, clothes, fuel, most things. People didn't have much and what they did have they saved and reworked and re-used. This 'make do and mend' mentality runs deep in my mother. She saves pieces of string. I grew up in a house with amazing collections of things, carefully preserved for projects, activities, games, emergencies... who knows?!
Day 290 (17th October) of A Collection A Day 2010

Here are some of the collections we had stashed in our house: fabrics, wrapping paper (either used or bought in post-xmas sales), coloured paper, seeds, small glass bottles and corks, a cabinet full of tiny glass animals (inherited), Smarties lids (when they used to have letters on them), ribbons, jelly molds (from my mother's mother - we parted with these in the end), Christmas cracker trinkets (to be used again - my mother made them by hand), marbles, promotional mugs, hat pins and... pinback badges (yep, that's where my obsession with them comes from!)
Day 335 of A Collection A Day 2010

So when I heard, rather belatedly, about Lisa Congdon's A Collection A Day 2010 project, where she photographed, drew and painted her (mostly) real and (sometimes) imaginary collections, my heart skipped a beat. (By the way, I heard it on the Button Candy blog, which is a must-follow for those collectors of things and lovers of buttons or simply of quietly pretty images.)

I spend a lot of time worrying about our messy house and where I can store my postcards and fabric scrap piles and charity-shop books and old calendars & magazines... so I always love art that makes hoarding seem beautiful. And there's a neat storage idea on day 335, which is also a great way of making use of my overflowing old jar collection...!

2 comments:

Blue Eyed Night Owl said...

Oh, I am such a hoarder too! And a collector as well. I'd say the weirdest collection I have, small as it may be, but I do own a few; are Indian nose rings;) Of the non-piercing kind haha. And I have to admit I have trouble throwing wrapping paper out too, though I have learned to just do it. And make sure it gets recycled with all the other paper of course;)

Anyway, these are really cool. I love collection posts too. And those owls are lovely<3

joface said...

Hullo Suki - Thanks for the post ! x x x My Granny taught me how to hoard too! Definitely the WWII thing.

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Thank you so much for taking the time to comment! It's always so lovely to hear from you.
Suki

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