What can be collected?
Reading time 7 min
What’s the purpose of collecting?
- Collections of everyday objects
- Collections of artworks
- Scientific Collections
- "Inert" Collections
- "Living" Collections
Collecting things in today’s society
Introduction
Collecting represents an activity, a habit, that takes part of the very essence of humanity. It seems to be omnipresent regardless of our geographical location, temporality, religion, culture, ethnicity, manners or customs.
This article questions the origins and history of this activity, its link with human beings, which went through historical moments and conflicts. We will also explain the different types of existing collections and how they all fit in today’s society.
What’s the purpose of collecting?
Collecting, by definition, is the act of gathering together a group of objects, usually these objects fall under a common theme. They are collected to be studied, compared with other objects, for the sake of exhibiting them at an event or as a hobby.
Collecting corresponds to an activity that consists in identifying, gathering, maintaining and managing this grouping. Depending on the theme, collections are more or less "large" in terms of number of objects. Collections can be called "rare" if the level of difficulty in finding and assembling these same objects together is high.
However, we will see that there are different types of collections, which depend on very distinct themes with specific objectives to be reached by the collector.
What can be collected?
Indeed, as specified above, humans can collect all types of objects, however some collections fulfill specific objectives, which allows us to highlight 5 major families of collections.
Collections of everyday objects
Collecting everyday objects represents the number one type of collection gathered by the humankind on earth.
This is often done in the context of leisure. There are names to designate the different types of collection according to the objects they include. A numismatist is a collector of coins, the billettophilist collects banknotes...
Until the 19th century, the term “cabinet of curiosities” designated the room where the collector stored his objects, in particular his medals.
The main collections of everyday objects in France are:
Collections of artworks
The first traces of art collecting date back to the Roman civilization (753 BC to 476 AD). The ancient treasures taken from the defeated during the various campaigns, especially in Greece, were imported into Roman territory and displayed publicly under porticoes. Subsequently, a market around these finds develops. One then observes the creation of the first museums of the pinacotheque* and thus the first collectors.
Description: On the reverse, Gallic trophy composed of a large oval shield, a helmet, a cuirass, a carnyx*, at the foot of which is a Gallic warrior (Vercingetorix?), naked up to the belt, disheveled, the torque around his neck, seated on the right, his hands tied behind his back.
The themes of art collections have evolved over time and through the main eras:
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- In the Middle Ages the collections were ecclesiastical* or princely treasures.
- From the Renaissance onwards, collections were built up first by enlightened aristocrats. They commissioned works for their private collections and the decoration of their palaces, but also religious art for the Church (example of patronage). They also became buyers, often through intermediaries.
- The activity of collection develops thereafter in the bourgeoisie from the XVIIIth century, in particular in the world of the artists and business.
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Finally, a large number of public collections have been built up thanks to donations from private collectors or their descendants, through dations* or bequests* to museum institutions.
Scientific Collections
A scientific collection is a collection of objects related to one or more scientific activities, more generally in the field of empirical sciences or human history. Its main purpose is to reference and document objects related to our history and environment.
Historically, a scientific collection was not of major interest until the Middle Ages when the first so-called "natural" collections (related to nature and more precisely to plants) appeared thanks to the learning and development of simple medicines and "medicinal plants". Subsequently, scientific collections have developed over time. We find actors similar to those who took part in art collections: the bourgeoisie and the aristocrats who exhibited their collections in cabinets of curiosities*. The latter were later joined by the universities, such as Oxford and the Ashmolean Museum, the oldest museum still open today.
Naturalist collections are usually accompanied by catalogs, a library and educational items: naturalist drawings, engravings, lithographs*, books and three-dimensional models of complete organisms or organs (animals, plants, fungi), still used for teaching. These objects are often of high aesthetic, scientific and technical quality, and often unique pieces made entirely by hand. Collections of living strains of microbes, human stem cells or cells of certain cultivated tissues also exist, for the needs of medical research, the vaccine industry, biotechnologies, etc.
The largest scientific collections are currently housed in natural history museums.
There are many categories of scientific collections, which we will introduce below.
"Inert" Collections
Scientific collections are most often kept for study purposes in research laboratories and/or for display in natural history museums, universities...
Thanks to this conservation and to the joint work of curators and archivists, classifications and nomenclatures are created in order to inventory and sort the so-called "scientific" objects. Here are some examples of inert collections:
- Mineralogy
- Biology
- Zoology
- Botany
- Ethnology
- Archaeology
- Paleontology
- Anthropology
- Astronomy
The "Living" Collections
Living collections deal with the order of all living things: biology, through the conservation of living individuals, mainly animals or plants, while respecting their well-being.
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- Animal (zoology), living collections are parks, terrariums, aquariums, aqua terrariums, vivariums, insectariums or any other device such as nature reserves.
- Plant (biology), acclimatization gardens, arboretums, botanical gardens or greenhouses for scientific purposes can be considered as places of conservation and by extension living scientific collections of plants.
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Since when does man collect?
The first fossil testimonies of the activity of collection are gathered by André Leroi-Gourhan at the time of excavations in the cave of the Reindeer in Arcy-sur-Cure: He observed blocks of iron pyrite, a shell of gastropod and a polypier fossil voluntarily brought and kept together in this cave inhabited by the man of Neandertal in the Mousterian (approximately 30 000 BC).
In addition, in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, collections of votive objects* were found in temples, libraries, palaces or in the homes of scholars. Numerous epigrams* of the Milan papyrus thus describe works of art or gems, statutes or ex-votos which were objects of collections.
Collecting things in today’s society
To conclude this article, we have seen that humankind has been collecting for thousands of years and for different reasons: leisure, knowledge, education, exchange, trade...
Nowadays, collecting is mainly practiced as a hobby and collectors manage public and private collections.
It can also be practised within the framework of a profession for example:
- Museum curators who care for public collections of works of art, rare and/or antique objects.
- Library curators who write and preserve documentation on these objects that make up the collections.
- Archivists whose function is to preserve any documentation or representations that are related to a specific theme.
Whether you are an enthusiast, an expert or a Sunday collector. Whether you are a history scholar, a fan of Johnny's objects or a bookseller addicted to old grimoires. Each man will find in his heart the collection and the motivation that is his own.
misunderstood by their relatives who see their passion as a "nice" and useless hobby, is often hidden as a priceless base of knowledge. In the era of cheap disposable content, collectors preserve their small Gallic village: they are modern day guardians of our history.
Glossary
*Pinacoteca: A pinacoteca is a museum exhibiting pictorial works.
*Carnyx: A Celtic musical instrument, of the wind family, of the brass subfamily.
*Ecclesiastical: Which refers to the Church.
*Dations: A dation in payment is the discharge of a debt by a performance or property different from that originally due.
*Legacies: A legacy is the free transmission of one or more assets of the deceased, made during his lifetime by will, but which will only take effect at his death.
*Curiosity cabinets: Curiosity cabinets were rooms, or sometimes furniture, where "rare, new, singular things" were stored and displayed.
*Lithography: A printing technique that allows for the creation and reproduction of multiple copies of a line drawn in ink or pencil on a limestone.
*Votive: A commemorative of the fulfilment of a vow, offered as a token of a vow.
*Epigrams: Inscription, first in prose, then in verse, that was engraved on monuments, statues, tombs and trophies, to perpetuate the memory of a hero or an event.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collecting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_collection
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_collection
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