Collections

I come from a family of collectors, I have to admit, and one of the pieces of wisdom passed down to me by my collecting parents was the following: to have a collection you must have no fewer than three of something. If you only have two of something, I guess it's just clutter.

[Another pearl from the same oyster: if it's worth less than 75 dollars, its a vase (rhymes with "case"), if it's worth more than 75 dollars it's a vase (rhymes with "schnozz"). Now that I think about this one, though, I'm sure inflation has probably altered this equation. Maybe it should be 100 dollars or more by now.]

Elsewhere here on Romantoes, on the "ephemera" blogs, readers can see parts of one of our collections. My most recent collection (it just reached the critical size) consists of a collection of glass canes, the Ohio-valley glassworker's preferred version of that old folk-arts classic, the hand-made walking stick. The joke of the glass cane, as I hope to explain one day (who isn't always happy to have a joke explained to them?), is echoed in two other classics of glassworker's folk-culture: the glass hammer and the glass chain.

But really, the whole purpose of this blog is to encourage our numerous regular readers to chime in: so tell us, what's your latest collection? What have you acquired recently that lifts a couple of useless pieces of clutter to the much more valued status of a collection?