‘Are you a collector or a maker?’ a chatty chap asked me during a ceramics exhibition months ago. He then went on to tell me how proud he was of his Japanese collection. ‘I’m a user’ I uttered without too much thought, and my answer has been lingering in the back of my mind ever since.
If you have more than one item of anything that’s non-essential (to you), you’re a collector. It could be pebbles, records, stamps, anything really. In that sense, I should have said that I was indeed a collector, even if I don’t identify as one. I have more cameras, fountain pens and tea bowls than I need. Not that many mind you, and I use most of them regularly.
At the start of 2022 I signed up to a pottery course to learn how to make things on the potter’s wheel (I’m not very good at it). Event then, I wouldn’t call myself a maker but rather a curator. I like putting together objects and ideas of different nature, in conversation with each other just as Jim and Helen Ede did at Kettle’s Yard, alas with less good taste.
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