To Have And To Hold: An Intimate History Of Collectors And Collecting

Collecting is one of the most common pastimes, and can often become a passion bordering on the obsessive. Our familiarity with the pursuit, however, obscures the questions at its heart: why do people amass things that have no use? What drives them to spend time and money getting hold of a single stamp, an unusual beermat, or a rare doll, only to put it in a folder or on a shelf? Why do we feel a need to possess these items, and why is it not enough to know that they exist in a museum, or somewhere else?

In this scintillating book, Philip Blom delves into the history of the collecting passion and explores it through a series of interlinked portraits, stories and discoveries, each characteristic of a period. What emerges is the story of a human quest more intimately linked with our primal needs than many would have thought possible.