Midweek Meander

This week I'm thinking about collections, I collect anything and everything, a magpie comes to mind! I enjoy seeing things grouped together and gather lots of ephemera for collage and assemblage. Last year we took the students to Barcelona as part of their  personal development, visiting galleries, private shows and small businesses. From the Museu Del Joguet de Catalunya there was a small (unexpected) exhibition on the ground floor and there I discovered the collections of Guy Selz, for me it was like hitting a seam of gold! Here are just a few of the photographs , please excuse the quality of the images as the collections were all in glass cases.

The 'Collection of Collections' of Guy Selz.

The collection is of a series of collections that Francoise and Guy Selz put together over a half a century (1925-1976) it was donated by Philippe and Dorothee Selz who have themselves gone on adding to it.

Shoes.

Dolls.

Clay pipes.

This text is a quote was from the press release of the exhibition.

Now being presented in Barcelona, the inventive universe of this 'Collection of Collections'-scraps, crepe paper, reliquaries, crosses, votive offerings, birds, dolls, animals, masks, lead soldiers, popular prints, albums of stickers,toy boats, etc-reflect the spirit of the collector who seeks to capture the energy of the past in groupings of objects..............

Masks.

Every passion borders on the chaotic,

but the collector's passion borders on

the chaos of memories.

Walter Benjamin.