The Human Urge to Collect Little Objects
“Circumstantial evidence suggests that there is still an interest in having personalised ‘cabinets of curiosities’ at home that can be shown to members of the family, as well as guests, serving as stores of memory and topics for discussion.”
Amelia Tait • Tourist trappings: why we all love a tacky souvenir fridge magnet
I must have thought something was really important if it warranted saving. If you put all of my memorabilia and artifacts together, you would get the most accurate story of who I was and what I valued at any one point in my life. And you’d probably need no more than a standard issue dining room table to lay it out.
Brené Brown • Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience
to save, to add to our collection, the action both etches it a little deeper into our hearts and creates a context around the artifact itself, whether text, song, image, or video. The context is not just for ourselves but for other people, the knit-together, shared context of culture at large. That’s what Benjamin described when he wrote, “The phen
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