The Colour Collaborative: August: Collection

In the middle of the lovely Stratford Park at Stroud, there's a 17th century wool merchant's mansion, now a museum.

Inside are treasures.

Collections of little things, lovingly, and dare I say obsessively amassed by the Victorians amongst others, who just loved to collect things and then show them off.  I always head for this chest of drawers.

Inside are all sorts of exquisite things from the natural world.

There are drawers of beetles, birds' eggs and butterflies.  None of which I would want to see collected today.  But here they are, these beautiful collections, and it is right that they are preserved.  While it is no longer acceptable to plunder the natural world to satisfy our curiosity and provide a talking point, it is essential to look after the things that have been taken in the past.  While photos and film are wonderful media for showing natural history to the world, nothing can match actually seeing that iridescent sheen on the carapace of a tiny beetle or the subtle speckles on a bird's egg or the stunning colours of a butterfly's wing.

To fully appreciate the miracles of nature, you have to see for yourself.  You have to stand inches away from all of those colours and just gaze at the way they contrast, blend, change and pattern.

I won't deny that I have mixed feelings about the collections, but to destroy them would seem terrible.  Nothing can bring back the life that was taken, but by displaying these beautiful things knowledge and respect are spread.  People come here to draw them, to learn about them and just to be amazed by them.  Tiny, perfect, natural works of art.  So many of the colours are muted, blending in with the world's earthy palette.  Favourite colours of mine, the subtlest of greens, the most delicate of blues, creams of every shade, from a bone white to a rich buttery gold.  Pale eggs splashed in rock shades of brown and grey, each one utterly unique, each brush stroke unlike any which came before.

Elsewhere in the room are different things.  I always like to look at the coins and try and imagine what life was like when they were first minted.  Some are black and softly eroded, some gleam dully and one or two still hold on to the silver shine of treasure despite the many hundreds of years they have seen.

Many of the labels were made by the original collectors.  Along with the collections there are notebooks and journals kept by the people who spent a good part of their lives looking for these items.  They are a fascinating glimpse into life long ago.  I envy collectors their knowledge and enthusiasm.  How wonderful it must be to know so much about one subject, to really study it in depth, to be an authority on it and to happily spend your life pursuing knowledge of it.

A collection can start quite without warning, without you even realising.  And little by little it builds into something that is far more than the sum of its parts.  When you put things side by side, you notice the details far more and you gain a deeper understanding of your subject.  A serious collection is a thing of beauty and importance.  Something that human nature, with our enquiring minds and a thirst for knowledge, is often inclined to make.  Tell me, do you have a collection, or do you wish you could make one?  What would it be?  I'd love to hear.

To visit the other Colour Collaborative blogs for more of this month's posts just click on the links below: 

       Annie at Annie Cholewa                                        Gillian at Tales from a Happy House

       Sandra at Cherry Heart                                         Jennifer at Thistlebear

And August's guest poster, Caroline at Scraps of Us

What is the Colour Collaborative?

All creative bloggers make stuff, gather stuff, shape stuff, and share stuff. Mostly they work on their own, but what happens when a group of them work together? Is a creative collaboration greater than the sum of its parts? We think so and we hope you will too. We'll each be offering our own monthly take on a colour related theme, and hoping that in combination our ideas will encourage us, and perhaps you, to think about colour in new ways.