If you are familiar with the sitcom Seinfeld (and I wonder who isn't), you might have heard about the coffee table book about coffee tables. Taking a twist on that, I'd like to mention my small, but none-the-less significant collection of books on collecting.

Like many things collected, they go through a series of stages, among them the initial notice, admiration, purchase, sometimes research (although this can come before purchase) and placement, before a thing is forgotten, or at least no longer immediately in sight of our minds-eye. This works fine for some objects, say a decanter, but not for books. A book may look nice, but can't be seen or known completely, until it is read.

This morning I picked up one of those books I have collected, but didn't yet know intimately. Purchased a year or more ago, it was about time we became more acquainted. I didn't quite know what else could be said on the subject, but the engaging pages showed me the subject is deeper, and the topic wider than I had realized. Beware ye who may find collecting tenuous.

"Your true collector does not appologize for his hobbies; he exalts their virtues," the book begins, "Necessity may occasionally compel him to resort to the camouflage of mid-interest, as when his family is not in sympathy with his pursuits; or, again, when fate has placed him in arid communion with unsympathetic associates, individuals whose personalities have developed independently of their souls, leaving them pronounced in the directions they invariably select; directions, in consequence, invariably divergent from those paths which the true collector loves to tread."

Take that! And dare you spend these moments pondering why collecting is tenuous, stop and take note of the quote from Anatole France...

People laugh at collectors, who perhaps do lay themselves open to raillery, but that is also the case with all of us when we fall in love with anything at all. We ought to envy collectors, for they brighten their days with a long and peaceable joy. perhaps what they do a little resembles the task of the children who spade up heaps of sand at the edge of the sea, laboring in vain, for all they have built will soon be overthrown, and that, no doubt, is true of collections of books and pictures also. But we need not blame the collectors for it; the fault lies in the vicissitudes of existence and brevities of life. The sea carries off the heaps of sand and the auctioneers disperse the collections; and yet there are no better pleasures than the building of heaps of sand at ten years old, of collections at sixty.

Should you want to read more or just have one lying around, it appears there are several collectible copies on Alibris.

It’s generally understood that the century mark defines an object as an antique. We all know, however that artistic value is not acquired by age. While most of us refer to our hobby as antique collecting, what most of us really seek is not just age, but the artistic values of an old object.

To be fair, age is an important attribute. From sophisticated New York, Boston and Philadelphia furniture to Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Ohio folk art, age brings a personal connection to the creator of an object and the people who had known it.

That personal component, the connection of an object to its maker is one that has been lost on objects that came into being from a machine rather than through the hands of a craftsman. While many machine-made objects have weathered the hundred years it takes them to come to be defined as an antique, they are still without that very personal connection to the past. They have age and connection with a time and place, but no individual connection with the person who made them.

It’s hard to relate to a time when the artist-craftsman was the source of most of consumer goods produced. The closest we come today is having objects by a noted designer. This is the model that most people alive today relate to, and perhaps one of the reasons it’s commonly observed that younger generations are not interested in antique collecting. While it’s easy to be aware of the “old” of an object, the appreciation of the art of it is not apparent as even the process in which these objects came into being is foreign.

Mass production has existed for most of our lifetimes, our parents and even grandparents lifetimes. The would-be collector is left with no obvious way to distinguish an object with age and artistic value from one that has merely acquired age. The differentiation is a learned ability and one the modern consumer is not accustomed to investing time in.

Most of the objects in homes today were not crafted by an individual. They are not of a unique design. They say even less about the craftsman who designed them then about the consumer who bought them and are more likely to be discarded than be in the homes of future generations.

The one exception is art. Despite the influence of Andy Warhol, while mass production has almost completely infiltrated the furniture market, the process has failed to diminish an appreciation of wall art among a broad segment of the public. Those who don’t realize they can have a real painting in their home have been to a museum to appreciate art.

The task before us who would like to see more collections in homes in addition to museums is to enhance the awareness of art as something we can not only appreciate, but should aspire to have adorn our walls. More, art is not limited to the wall. It can be found in our furniture and other home décor.

The limited definition of an antique as an object that has simply accumulated a hundred years may be one that prevents the hobby from being fully appreciated by younger generations. It is the universal appreciation for art that can change that.