note to all :: i will have this book

What could prompt such an outburst of intended acquisitiveness?!  Well, you know me.  Love the vintage, love stuff, love collecting.  So along comes a book that is perfect for...well, for me!

In Flagrante Collecto:  Caught in the Act of Collecting, by Marilynn Gelfman Karp.  Looks so cool...The chapters are divided into types of things collected, and explores not only why these items survived, but why we want them still...

owners grew up..."Owners Grew Up" remarks on the prizes of childhood that were relinquished by most people for the trappings of adulthood. The inner child survived in very few (ex: caps & cap guns, penny arcade pinup cards, character spoons, robots, toy soldiers & tanks, toy gas pumps & traffic signs, people waiting on benches for electric trains to arrive).

 
 never made enough..."Never Made Enough" theorizes that during the ripe time for a specific original, functional, novel, beautiful or prized object, not many were made; consequently, very few survive (ex: lark lures, figural calipers, self-promoting bridge tables, military button polishing shields, end-of-day pieces, mummy pencils & Moses’ baskets, leg shoe horns, lace bobbins).

conceived for provisional utility..."Conceived For Provisional Utility" ruminates on objects that were designed for the extension of the useful life of another object or to contain, support, identify or instruct, for a limited period of time, after which it outlived its purpose (ex: taps, crutches, airline safety instructions, police mug shots, kinky hot girl calling cards, license plate key chain tags, match box labels, jack o’lanterns).

a better mousetrap..."Obsolescence & the Better Mousetrap" ponders objects of such frequent and commonplace use in earlier times that their improvement and replacement was not even considered by the user. With stealth, improved versions displaced them. They were the dwindling party. Those that remain speak volumes about other times when they were the cat’s meow or the only game in town (ex: printed waxed paper, insulators, hangers, figural pencil sharpeners, butcher display tags, animal can openers, blotters, clothespins).

got lost..."Got Lost (Too Small to Keep Track of)" takes up the cause of those items that are so small as to be easier to lose than to find. Frequently paired or part of a set, the loss of one renders its counterpart(s) useless and adrift (ex: buttons, marbles, stanhopes, cufflinks, dice, tacks).

 

made for one use only..."Made for One Use Only" reflects upon objects that were tailor-made for a specific sole use after which they could not be reused (ex: fruit crate labels, cigar rings & labels, tobacco tags, bakeable cake charms, pictorial seed packets, Civil War propaganda envelopes)."

How. Cool. Is. That.  Want to know more?  Visit the book's website, or for more of a commitment, amazon.
 
(All photos and chapter descriptions from the In Flagrante Collecto website, published by Abrams Books.)

xoxox.