Bidspirit auction | Collectors: Expressions of Self and

Collectors: Expressions of Self and Other - London, Horniman Museum & Gardens, 2001. 256 pp., il., 27 by 20.8 cm Ex-Library book, but otherwise in very good condition with some wear to the soft cover. Objects and collections share the capacity to possess many meanings. Meanings are both historically and culturally constituted, and rest on the socially generated and shifting public consensus that constructs a hierarchy of values; one which finds its most cogent expression in sumptuary, exotic or rare manufactures. These essays explore the specific and changing motivations underlying the collection of ethnographic and oriental objects during the 19th and 20th centuries. They provide particular examples of how museums superimpose their own meanings and classifications on objects that once held entirely different values for the people who collected or made them. The contributors draw on the rich legacy of ethnographic collections found in museums throughout the UK and elsewhere. English Edition. Rare to find.