EH: We had about 180 submissions, of which we took approximately 130. The criteria for accepting the submissions were how good a story they prepared, how articulate they were about collecting.
AT: About those story panels that accompany each item: to me that’s one of the most interesting parts of the show. How and why did you decide to include them?
EH: We each felt strongly that it was important to have the story to go along with each object. Most exhibitions have a strong historical or intellectual thrust. Yet few collectors collect from this perspective – they collect passionately. We were trying to get inside the mind of collectors.
AT: What did you find in terms of getting inside the mind of collectors?
EH: That there are many different aesthetic, historic, and literary interests that might lead people to collect. The reasons why people collect are extremely personal to them.
AT: How would you say the interests of your members have changed over the years?
EH: There are billions of books out there. The members of our club are no longer interested in just fine bindings, incunabula, etc. There now is a great range. We have things in this exhibit that probably cost one or two dollars and things that cost in the high thousands of dollars. People can now create collections with little means.
AT: As an amateur Emily Dickinson collector, I’d like to ask you about one piece in the show: Emily Dickinson’s manuscript note recipe for coconut cake. Was that bought by a collector of cookbooks and recipes or by a Dickinson collector?
EH: It was bought by a Dickinson collector. As you know, all original Dickinson items are extremely scarce. This one all the more so in that it goes to Dickinson’s image as a homebound woman. But now that you bring up Dickinson, I’d like to say something else about that piece. It’s one of the serendipitous connections in the show that we have side by side Emily Dickinson’s recipe for coconut cake a work by Lesley Pill that is a poem dress, literally a paper dress made of a Dickinson poem.
AT: To retreat a bit to a subject we already touched on tangentially, do you see a difference between book and manuscript collectors today and those of yesteryear?
EH: Yes, definitely. Diversity is the watchword these days. There is a larger quantity of people who self-identify as book collectors today, and there is simultaneously more diversity within what is being collected.
AT: Can you discuss the internet as a factor in this changing population of book collectors?
Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - December - 2002 Issue
The Grolier Club Collects by Abby Tallmer
Collector: Bruce J. Crawford
