RMHR - Exploring the collecting self

Roger Slack Building on a long period of fieldwork, this paper aims to explicate what it is to do being a collector – in this case of fountain pens. The paper links the activities of collecting to the notion of the semiotic self and highlights the autobiography of the collector vis-à-vis the artefacts collected. The search for ‘good examples’, ‘grail pens’, and the ‘find’ are characteristic of being seen as a collector and the ways that these and the activities of finding them, e.g. in second-hand stores, antique fairs, pen fairs, or online are narrated is key in constituting the collection as such (as opposed to simply owning some pens). What I will call ‘collectors tales’ also constitute what has been called ‘professional vision’ i.e. the seeing of an often less than pristine or not obviously collectible object as collectible – often what may look like ‘scrap’ is see-able by the collector as a rare example of a particular pen in need of restoration, etc. I show that pens and collections also have narratives that adhere to them in terms of repair and restoration as well as history (re brands, the development of the pen, and particular uses such as the stenographer pen) and completeness (e.g. owning every example of the Waterman red ripple cap bands and knowing what they were intended to do). Thus, the paper will link personal and artefact biographies in and as of the natural history of collecting.