To have and to hold : an intimate history of collectors and collecting / Philipp Blom.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Blom, Philipp, 1970-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Collectors and collecting--History.

Collectors and collecting.

Collectors and collecting--Philosophy.

Collectors and collecting--Social aspects.

History.

Physical Description:

xiv, 273 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Woodstock, NY : Overlook Press, 2003.

Summary:

The cabinets of obsessive Renaissance collectors were filled with rhinoceros horns encrusted with rubies and jaws of gigantic fish, stuffed birds in the most extraordinary colors, and glorious seashells of all descriptions. Today's collectors amass everything from Picassos to Pez dispensers. But why? In To Have and To Hold, Philipp Blom explores the passionate history of collecting from the Renaissance to the present.

Every collected object, be it a matchbook or a martyr's fingernail, carries a meaning that transcends the object itself; it is a totem. Single-minded pursuit turns the collector into cultural anthropologist. For Alex Shear, his collection from the post-War period -- from vintage radios, fallout shelters, and Jell-O boxes to elaborate hair drying contraptions, bobby pins, and Barbie dolls -- preserves an age of innocence in the form of the familiar household items that served as the set props for the 1950s American Dream. Alex's Renaissance counterpart is King Rudolph II, whose collection of the art and exotica of his day (housed in his ever-expanding castle in Prague) was breathtaking in its complexity and sophistication, representing the magnificent profusion of the treasures of a world newly explored.

Out of this glittering diversity of material Blom distills the themes underlying this elusive passion: conquest and possession, chaos and memory, a void to be filled, and the awareness of our own mortality. What emerges is the story of the collector as bridegroom, deliriously, obsessively happy, wed to his possessions, till death do us part.

Contents:

Three Old Men 3

Part I A Parliament of Monsters

The Dragon and the Tartar Lamb 13

A Melancholy Ailment 27

An Ark Abducted 50

The Exquisite Art of Dr Ruysch 60

Part II A Complete History of Butterflies

This Curious Old Gentleman 77

The Mastodon and the Taxonomy of Memory 92

Angelus Novus 98

The Greatness of Empires 109

An Elevator to the Heavens 124

Part III Incantations

Why Boiling People is Wrong 139

Three Flying Ducks 158

Anglers and Utopias 169

A Theatre of Memories 176

Part IV The Tower of Fools

A Veritable Vello-Maniac 197

Leporello and His Master 212

Mr Soane is Not at Home 220

Epilogue: Plastic Cups and Mausoleums 232.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 256-[264]) and index.

ISBN:

1585673773