Narrating Objects, Collecting Stories [Paperback]

Narrating Objects, Collecting Storiesis a wide-ranging collection of essays exploring the stories that can be told by and about objects and those who choose to collect them. Examining objects and collecting in different historical, social and institutional contexts, an international, interdisciplinary group of authors consider the meanings and values with which objects are imputed and the processes and implications of collecting. This includes considering the entanglement of objects and collectors in webs of social relations, value and change, object biographies and the sometimes conflicting stories that things come to represent, and the strategies used to reconstruct and retell the narratives of objects. The book includes considerations of individual and groups of objects, such as domestic interiors, novelty tea-pots, Scottish stone monuments, African ironworking, a postcolonial painting and memorials to those killed on the roads in Australia. It also contains chapters dealing with particular collectors  including Charles Bell and Beatrix Potter  and representational techniques.

Introduction: objects, collectors and representations  Part I: the mutuality between objects and persons  Part II: Object meanings in context  Part III: Collectors and collecting in focus  Part IV: Representational and narrative strategies