The Collecting Urge

An estate sale can give one an intimate glimpse into the life of a complete stranger, to the point that the stranger becomes a stranger no more. I wrote about that phenomenon in my last Goodreads post and I’m revisiting it here. People collect things. A person who has inhabited the same house for decades has had ample time to indulge the collecting urge, and the best estate sales take place in houses that have been inhabited for decades.

My mom collected objects having to do with chickens. Over the years, gift-giving occasions brought chicken figurines of all shapes and sizes, and ornamental plates decorated with images of chickens, until it seemed that every surface in the kitchen and dining room had some poultry-related object on it. She is gone now, and since she lived on the opposite coast from me, I wasn’t the main person to deal with the objects she left behind. But somewhere other chicken collectors are enjoying the additions to their collections that they found among my mother’s things.

There’s a certain danger, however, in letting friends and family know what one collects. Let’s say you’re into butterflies, or maybe you’re not even all that into butterflies, but mention in an unguarded moment that you like butterflies. The damage is done. Every gift you receive henceforth will involve butterflies: pajamas with butterflies printed on them, dishes decorated with butterflies, butterfly wind chimes, butterflies on stakes to position around your garden, real butterflies pinned to backing and framed . . .

A few years ago, I went to an estate sale in a beautiful rambling old house. In place of a traditional lawn, the landscaping featured a large meadow of native plants favored by butterflies. And inside the house the items for sale included, among many butterfly-related items, coffee-table books about butterflies, framed prints of butterflies, butterfly note cards, and butterfly wrapping paper.

I know of a frog collector. I’ve never met her but I was once shopping with a friend in quest of a birthday gift for the frog-collecting woman. The object chosen was a large frog sculpture made of metal wire bent, twisted, and soldered to form a frog that could perch on the edge of a shelf. I found myself wondering how it would be received, and whether the recipient was really an enthusiastic collector or had merely mentioned once that frogs were cute—thereby solving the “What shall I buy her for her birthday?” quandary in perpetuity for my friend.

I also know of a pig collector, my sister-in-law, and I’ve been guilty of contributing to that collection. In the animal realm, however, I’m sure the most commonly collected creature is the cat. It’s easy to understand how people’s affection for cats can create a desire to be surrounded, if not by them, then by images of them, at all times. (I myself have a cat weathervane.)

I’ve been to many many estate sales where it was clear that the house had been inhabited by a cat-lover: Cat figurines, of course. Large stone cats intended as door stops. Paintings and prints of cats. Stuffed animal cats. Cat note cards. Decorative plates with cats on them. A teapot with cats on it. A teapot shaped like a cat. Coffee mugs with cats on them. Coffee mugs shaped like cats.

I have collections. That goes without saying, given my devotion to estate sales. Browsing among vintage items, cast-offs, or a lifetime’s accumulation in a house that needs to be emptied for sale is much more fun—like a treasure hunt, in fact—if one is looking to add to a collection.

I bought my first matryoshka on a trip to Russia, new, in a souvenir shop. I had always loved the idea of the nesting dolls, one inside the other till the smallest, innermost, one is the size of a bean. My souvenir matryoshka quickly acquired companions, because once I was home and back in my routine of going to estate sales, I noticed that they were everywhere—souvenirs, probably, of other people’s trips to Russia.

I bought one every time I saw one, usually for five or ten dollars, or even less, and now I have over thirty, lined up on a shelf in my kitchen. My most recent one was something of a splurge at twenty dollars, but she is huge, with at least ten more dolls, smaller and smaller, inside her. She is also very old. The colors used on classic matryoshkas tend to be red, yellow, and black, and usually the figures are wearing some generalized version of Russian peasant garb, with colorful aprons, babushkas tied over their heads, and rosy cheeks. The outfits often feature a stylized rose, so large as to be out of scale with the little figure, but red, in keeping with the color scheme. The colors on my giant matryoshka are so pale that the details of her outfit are hard to make out, but the many additional dolls she contains are brightly colored, suggesting that they were kept safe inside her, shielded from the sun while she, over the years, faded.

For a while it seemed that I found a matryoshka at nearly every sale I went to. Then a few years ago, I stopped seeing them. Are the sale-organizers reluctant to put them out now that Russia is at war with Ukraine? Or given that estate sales usually take place after the homeowners die, is everyone in the generation of people who brought back matryoshkas from Russia now dead (except me, of course) and their estates dispersed?

I hope not, though that shelf in my kitchen has gotten awfully crowded.