Throughout the history people and institutions have been collecting things that were part of a story. The ancient libraries and universities of the old age collected scrolls and books from important writers and of historical, philosophical, artistic and historical value. Historians collected facts and story those that were written and those that were passed from generation to generation as a cultural heritage as stories that were written only on a much later period. Royal dynasties collected art from the various periods of it's existence. Religious institutions collected books and icons that told the stories of their faith. The creation of palaces, libraries and museums can be attributed to a degree to the need of a society to have it's stories told in all the means that were at it's disposal.
Throughout time there were always people behind the most sacred gathering of wisdom, those people were at times enjoying the patronage of a rich powerful man that gave them access to all the sources, research and finance and they usually acted out of great love and care to the story, the culture and the human creations around them.
The other sort of private collector was a person of means searching for the experience of beauty, order and intelligence in a chaotic world and gathering various items so he would be surrounded by beauty and meaning. Some of the motivation of these people was to shield themselves from the harsh realities of the daily lives creating a close world of people, events, items and connections so as to live in an artificial environment that they mastered completely.
This was the world of nobility for many centuries. This is still the world or the tendency of many people today that use their wealth to create a world of their own feeling the actual world is too dense, chaotic, ugly, and dangerous to live in it. In spiritual terms this situation is characterized as lack of participation in life and it leads to various problems because one's difficulties with life are not solved but avoided in the creation of an artificial world that consists only of pleasant things.
Sure we all like to have a pleasant world and we do our best to create a sanctuary for ourselves and our families and we have to provide ourselves with a safe place for reflection, rest, inspiration, creativity and all the other things that our spirit needs in order to charge itself but we go back to the world with the new insights, wisdom, sense of beauty, social understanding and do our best to improve the world we live in.
It doesn't take much to be able to guide people to find a place of thought, wisdom, inspiration and growth, sometimes the mere fact that we gather so lovingly some artifacts at a certain order, place or context can enable us and others in our lives to see a new perspective that they would have otherwise missed.
Most of us collect items that are meaningful for us and are meaningful for the society in general, by giving people the gift of thought, reflection and memory, something that so many of the people in our modern society have forgotten to do for so long.
Unless one stops and allows himself the time and the opportunity to examine where he has been to and where he is going the conscious creation process of progress both culturally and spiritually in society would end. The great work of those who care and have so much devotion to telling the stories that should be told is a very special gift that many collectors offer to humanity.
The post is written by Linda from the artifact collectors blog.
