Unobscure Objects of Desire

            When I was a child, I used to believe that all the objects in our house interacted while we humans slept. The dolls threw a tea party, the pieces on the onyx chessboard cavorted, and the dish ran away with the spoon. I was too young to understand words like “anthropomorphize,” but it wouldn’t have mattered because in my mind, I was not attributing personality traits to, for example,  my father’s Shriner’s fez; no: my father’s Shriner’s fez innately possessed them. It follows then that I would grow up to be a collector of objects, things that I find wondrous. Judging from the popularity of Marie Kondo’s book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up,” one might even presume that anyone with every square inch of wall space covered with art and 1930’s bird wall pockets is somehow not as evolved. The book suggests we “get rid of anything that does not spark joy.” But what if everything I have purposefully collected over my lifetime sparks joy?  Seeing the life within individual objects, imagining the stories the older pieces have to tell and the hands they have passed through, keeps the joy sparking.

            In the past, I have had a booth space at various antiques shops from Albuquerque to Sebastopol. Collectors are unique bunch, and one is either born with the collecting gene, or one is not. If it’s in your DNA, you will see nothing odd about getting up at dawn to wander through the homes of the newly deceased at an estate sale in search of old treasures. In a world where austerity is lauded and the general public might not differentiate between a collector and a hoarder, my passion for specific “stuff” is perhaps outmoded. The key word here is specific. Collectors have very precise things they surround themselves with, very exacting criteria. In fact, the particularity of the collector never ceases to amaze me.  I have had regular customers who had me keep an eye out for:  iron bells, but only ones with rust on them, crumb butlers, Victorian post-mortem daguerreotypes, shaving brushes, but only boar bristle ones, and the list goes on. One customer entered the shop with a Geiger counter on the hunt for Vaseline glass, the real stuff being made in the 18oos with uranium for a lovely glow.  

            My own collections are: teapots (the rule being that they have to actually be functional,) anything with a mermaid on it, anything with a flying fish on it, salt and pepper shakers, birds’ nests, bird wall pockets, metal pitchers, old tins for storing tea, glove molds, anything with an octopus on it,  vintage Hawaiiana, Moroccan tea glasses, and charm bracelets. I also collect Zuni Fetishes, but I see these more as art or sculpture, as artifact. The idea that one needs the medicine that a particular animal has to offer resonates with me, and the carvings are beautiful things, small and alive.  Many Zuni carvers say they can pick up the stone and see the animal inside, knowing immediately what they are going to carve, the attributes it carries: the joy of hummingbird, the self-esteem of moose, the introspection of bear and so on. These carvings are perhaps the epitome of noticing the life an object projects, the reflection it sets in motion.

             

Old objects can send you back to a very specific time and place, a mixing bowl like the one your mother made cookie dough in, an old pirate-chest bank like the one your brother saved his paper-route money in, a pink princess telephone, a Beatles bubblegum card.  I  see a Ouija board and am sent reeling back to the séance circle of some slumber party circa fifth grade where we “called back” both Walt Disney and Jimi Hendrix, and each of them “gave us a sign,” that they were in the room. I can come across one of those old wooden peg clothespins, roll it over in my hand and recall my mother hanging the laundry on the line, talking with our neighbor over the fence, curlers in her pretty hair. Many times a day at the various antique shops where I sold, customers would see something and exclaim: I had this same train set when I was a boy!  Or: We had this same clock on the wall in our kitchen!  There is always a note of pleasure in these reunions,  perhaps from the satisfaction of knowing a part of their pasts survived changing tastes and times, and is still seen as something of value.

          

  For some, all this color and visual stimulation is too much, but for others, the space is magic, not clutter.  A friend of mine once said: I like coming to your house because every time I look around, the eye rests on something new and interesting. There is an order to my  clusters of creamers, a tidiness to my row of teapots.  So for me: less is not more.