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A very minimal collection today -- just three cracker-toy roulette wheels. The smallest one is about the size of a 2p piece. They all spin.

Calling Brighton collectors

My daughter and I had a lovely day trip to Brighton on Friday. Nothing much to report -- it was red hot, the shops were great as always, we had fun in Yo Sushi. But I spotted this flyer in Snooper's Paradise:

Given the recent flurry of collections we've been posting, there are a good few of us who might be interested in this. Unfortunately, like me, most of us live too far away. I would jump at the chance to do this if I lived nearer. Still, perhaps some Sussex collectors may see this...

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Unlucky for some, so let's have lucky (?) cats

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Here are my few Mexican Day of the Dead things (surprisingly difficult to photograph), or what I think of as my Mexican Day of the Dead things which, in reality have got rather blurred (in the sense of what is actually a 'Dad of the Dead' object and what can pass muster as one), ever since I held my own Mexican Day of the Dead in my rented flat in Crouch End, London, years ago. That was a big event for me -- an installation! It involved weeks of preparation and the scrutinising of the photographs I'd taken at the Museum of Mankind exhibition (which inspired the whole thing) plus the pages of Elizabeth Carmichael and Chloe Sayer's book, The Skeleton at the Feast.

from the Museum of Mankind exhibition

I made as many things as I could (which I haven't included in the first photo) and personalised various things as I felt that was in the spirit of the real Day of the Dead.

My great grandfather and great-aunts being ancestors in my Day of the Dead (with tin cut-outs, exotic fruit, homemade skull...)

I don't know where this candleholder is any more. My memories are quite confused as my (wild) enthusiasm for Mexican crafts waned a few years ago and everything got dispersed.

gourd rattle

I have some milagros (metal shapes to attach to the skirts of a Madonna - there was a hand milagro in the recent hand collection), cut-out painted tin decorations, a carved gourd rattle (above), a very tattered pink paper cut by Maurilia Rojas (visible in the photo below).

The blue-robed skeleton is a treasured possession given to me by Irma Kurtz when I edited her travel book, The Great American Bus Ride.

The cross is probably the best thing I have -- studded all over with milagros. I'm not a religious person but even I have been known to rub one of its many hands or a book or an eye on it when I'm hoping for luck in some particular endeavour.

Cycling skeleton

Another great book is Chloe Sayer's Arts and Crafts of Mexico. What was amazing at the Museum of Mankind show (which was, I think, curated by Carmichael and Sayer) was that you could actually buy some of the same objects that were in the show -- they had brought back lots of things from their curatorial visits -- and it really brought it home to me that the Day of the Dead is a living cultural thing, not something enshrined in the past. That's really why I embarked on my own Day of the Dead in my flat -- there's a story inspired by the whole event loaded up on the blog with a link in the right-hand column, if you're interested.

Frida

I also went through a period of loving Friday Kahlo (not so much her art as her life), Diego Rivera (ditto, more so), J. G Posada, Tina Modotti and, lately, Leonora Carrington (again, her life more than her art, alas). I have Mexican loteria cards too -- very good for collage!

I know I'm by no means alone in loving all this stuff -- so what! It's wonderfully graphic and vital. Just looking back at all this stuff has reignited my passion all over again.

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pigs

Day of the Dead soon, I promise... Have to take new photo.

Mini collection 10 -- and going crazy

Some little boxes

I'm very much enjoying the self-indulgence of photographing some of my bits and pieces and putting them into this blog. I hope you're not getting sick of the sight of these pictures. I had yesterday off work and I'm also at home today and tomorrow, for half term, so have got more time than usual to indulge. It should be unalloyed pleasure ... and yet...
     Take these boxes, above, for example. Some of them were on the table in the back room where I sit to make stuff. Some of them were stashed away in boxes under the sofa in there. Two were in drawers -- different drawers. A couple of them I'd forgotten I even had. Still, here they all are together in a nice lot. But, no sooner had I uploaded the image than I glanced up and saw two more nice boxes literally in front of my eyes on the shelf above my desk:

Can you see them? One's got a fairy on it and one's got decoupage roses. But I'd completely forgotten about them. Can you also see the DUST? And all the other nutty stuff, which is actually LESS than normal because I took half of it into the other room yesterday to photograph it?
     The problem is that not only do I have no idea where anything is but I don't have any real idea of what I've got. It makes me feel very rocky and unsettlingly vague. One obvious answer would be to have a massive sort out, throw lots of things away, and start afresh, hopefully able to retain the knowledge of what was left. But I can't see myself doing this because I feel such attachment, such affection for all these stupid things. Most of them have no monetary value whatsoever, but I really love them, specially if I've had them for a long time. And trying to sort it all out just brings out the obsessive in me.

room for a littl'un?

I've already posted the seahorses, but yesterday I had to rephotograph them because I'd found one more tiny one and it was so sweet...

Then I HAD to redo the hands as well because I found lots more as I was paddling round in all the mess. THEN this morning I found two more small brass letter-holder hands but have so far managed to resist the urge to do them all over again. But it's really annoying me that they're missing.

And what do you do about objects like these fish, which are mostly hideous and ill-matching. I only really like the one on wheels (which I love). The rest are just ... there. So should I get rid of them? I realise now that I'm contradicting my declared special love for all these things, but what it shows is that it's given or withheld according to unknowable rules. Take these monkeys, for example -- I love these:

But why? No idea. I love these robots too:

The problem is twofold. One is that I 'collect' so many things and then, on top of that, am a de facto collector of things that just happen to have arrived in the house one way or another and are just asking to be taxonomised.

Some Festival of Britain souvenirs

     The things I actively collect include:

• Festival of Britain memorabilia
• Toy televisions and things in the shape of televisions (eg salt and pepper pots, lighters, ashtrays, viewers, money boxes, etc)
• Colour charts
• Toy typewriters
• Toy radios
• Things in the shape of oranges (eg jam pots, toast racks, lamps)
• Space toys and souvenirs
• Butlins souvenirs
• Clowns and clown heads and other heads
• Lustre teacups
• Things covered in broken pottery mosaic
• Cracker toys and plastic charms

But I also collect, unofficially:

• Printed tin buckets
• Japanese sweet packaging
• Hands
• Vari-vue flickers
• Dexterity puzzles
• Postcards of the Coney Island Parachute Drop
• Toy birds
• Gift tags (these just saved from my childhood)
• Children's books (ditto)
• Mexican Day of the Dead objects
• Flaming hearts
• Cowboy themed things

That's not even counting some things that my husband collects and I don't. Madness, no?
     The other problem is storage and organisation -- lack of both. There are boxes of things in every nook and cranny and none of it is ordered or catalogued in any way -- well, you wouldn't really do that, would you? When we moved down south from oop north a decade ago we moved from a house quite a lot bigger than this one we live in now -- the exchange rate on those Northern Pounds isn't too good. We had one and a bit pantechnicons of stuff. It was terrifying. Most of the stuff we haven't got room for is now crammed into our loft and I quite often lie awake in bed and wonder when the ceiling is going to come down on us... Help!

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