Collections

I am a collector by temperament, and this category is about the things I have gathered over a lifetime: stamps, miniatures, books, photographs, and the odd obsessions that come with the collecting mind. Over the years I have accumulated, sorted, and cared for more objects than I can easily count.

Collecting is partly about the objects and partly about the impulse behind them, the urge to understand a subject completely, to organize it, to hold the whole of it in one place. A stamp collection is a tiny museum of history and geography. A library is a record of a mind. The collection always says something about the collector.

The posts here cover what I collect, how I came to it, and what the collecting itself has taught me. If you have ever been pulled into the deep, satisfying work of building a collection, you will understand exactly what I mean.