A collection of collections

I have been reading a selection of essays called Collectors, Expressions of Self and Others, edited byAnthony Shelton who is the Head of Collections at the Horniman Museum.

In Sarah Cheangs essay 'The Dogs of Fo: Gender, Identity and Collecting' she say's at 'the Collection is the self, created by the will of the collector in response to both conscious and subconscious desires.

It represents the desired self: an ideal self. Whatever longing has produced the collection, it can be seen as a way of providing a controlled cohesion of identlity which is otherwise fractured and unstable.

This self possession through possessions is so strong that the loss of the collection can be likened to loss of self. The collection also offers an opportunity for immortality, as the materiality of the collection, of preserved intact can insure continuing integrity of the collector's identity after his/her death.

Collections provide a material encoding of the collectors desired identity.'