Experts, Artists, Collectors

I tend to podner a lot, especially about dolls and collecting. I've read that artists are collectors, and I refer my readers to Austin Kleon's Steal Like an Artist for further elaboration. Collectors are artists; we collect selectively, often to create a pattern. Some artists like Dina Vierny, Joseph Cornell, and Rembrandt, literally collect, sometimes to find objects to create art, but sometimes just because they like other things, too.

There is an art to building a collection, to displaying it, arranging inventories, catloging, and hunting out and seeking. Marilyn Gelfman Karp says it more eloquently than I ever could, and she, incidentally, is an artists, art collector, and art professor. See her book, In Flagrante Collecto. What makes a collector an expert in her field? The Uniform Commerical code basically defines an merchant as an expert because of knowledge gained in an area, which knowledge is not exclusive to buying and selling a good or service. So, collectors, whether dealers or not, are often experts.

The trend I see in dolls, and some other collectible fields, is that expert usually means lots of money to buy high end, and knowledge of marketing and sales. I know plenty of great dealers and museum curators who know their product inside and out; many are collectors, some not. But, I throw out this idea as food for thought; I venture to guess that most experts in Leondardo da Vinci and his works do not own an actual Leonardo painthing, and most experts in Chaucer, Bronte, or other great author, do not own an original manuscript. Yet, they study what is available, read, visit museums and libraries, accumulate their own archives and libraries, and sometimes, their own collections. So does a doll collector; so it is possible to know, study, even handle the "high end" dols, without actually owning or buying/selling them. Too often "serious" collector means rich, and quality or high end means it cost over, say $5000. I disagree. I don't want to start something. I certainly don't want to bring down doll prices. But, I've heard very "high end" dealers complain about people who are collecting money, not dolls and who have lost track about the joys of a hobby, and researching it, and its history. I've articles in the same spirit by A. Glenn Mandeville about Keeping Dolls so MIB that we collect boxes, not dolls, and by R. Lane Herron redfining rarity, e.g., "Will the Rare Doll Please stand up?"

Happy Dolling. Even I, who have viewed/handled tens of thousands of dolls in my collecting history, will tell others to slow down, collect what they like and invest in CDs and IRAs, spend time taking stock, repairing, organizing, dressing, even making dolls. It isn't all about one upping someone on eBay. Happy New Year, and I'd like to hear your thoughts. Sorry in advance for typos. My arm is killing me.