new crush

Here are a few of my collections photographed this morning as an homage to Lisa Congdon's collection a day blog. I am in serious full swoon with her blog, please go check it out.

1. Vintage wrapping paper.

This is a fairly recently started collection for me. I made a commitment to myself not to buy new wrapping paper a few years ago, and mostly I use comics or old maps and calendars, but when I see this stuff at estate sales or the goodwill I just can't help myself. It feels a little bit like adhering to the letter but not the spirit of the law, but I just can't help myself.

2. Thumb tacks and push pins.

I've shown you some of these before. I have a related thing for cork boards.

3 & 3.5. Security envelope linings and rubber bands.

Here are two things that have become kind of a tic for me, now that I've started seeing them I can't stop and I see new ones, ripe for scavenging, everywhere. The linings I first started noticing when I read Collections of Nothing by William Davies King, and I saw an almost volley ball sized rubber band ball at someone's house last year and just had to have one for my very own. It's coming along, check back next year.

One aspect of the King book is the idea of his collections interfering with his life. I would have to call him a borderline hoarder, and the hoarder border is something all of us collectors face to some extent I think. How much is too much, how much is amazing? Sometimes I walk into an estate sale and a horror washes over me, I want to go home and get rid of everything I own (but I never do.) Sometimes I see something like ACAD and I get the tingle, I want to go find more. Photography is helpful, I photograph a lot of stuff that I get rid of and it makes it easier. Blogging is helpful too, it is a place to put stuff, I think that is part of what LC is getting at with her lovely year long project.

A few other awesome books I pulled down while I was writing this:

Evidence: The Art of Candy Jernigan,

Finders, Keepers: Eight Collectors,

Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder,

and

Typologies

Would you call this #4 for today? Collection of books on collecting?

forwards and backwards

It has been at least 21 years since my elementary school class buried a time capsule. I'm beginning to think Mrs. Spengler had no intention of leaving instructions for its retrieval. How many years did we say anyway, 10, 25, 50? This country's playgrounds must just be mine fields of abandoned time capsules. Another story adults tell children, and like most of those stories, told with perfectly good intentions. I'm sure there is that one district where someone's dad keeps track, and he shows up on the appointed day, shovel ready. But I know that watching the clock wasn't and isn't really the point. Mrs. Spengler, you did a good job.

I started thinking about Lincoln Elementary while I was digging around my own basement a few days ago. Like I said I've been contemplating the mail in offer lately, its heyday and decline. I came across this crash cover, another mail related obsession of mine. I guess I had forgotten all about it, but here it is, at the right time, rising to the surface. The cover itself was at least familiar, but I had completely forgotten about the rush coupon inside. I haven't been able to figure out what Coast Industries was, Los Angeles, 1950, anybody?

What a sad little novella this poor water stained envelope is. Mr. and Mrs. Prince, what happened to you? Mr. Prince were you dreaming of California, 52 and alone? I'm sure I don't even have to mention that I think Mrs. Prince might have felt there was some bitter irony to her married name. Is that the sad story, the modern one, or do you prefer the traditional one, the one where she died young, and so soon after the war. Either way, she's long gone and without even a name. And then the fire in Cadiz? Oh no.

No prior hypnotic training needed! I feel like I'm always burying things and digging them back up again. Refolding, resmoothing, reordering, putting away. Sometimes it feels like exciting and wonderful discovery, I remeet little perfect object being its delightful self, containing its weird old story. Sometimes I just wish I could keep everything out all the time, or at least not forget so much all the time.