Collecting Collections

Contributor post by Lisa Congdon

Hi everyone!

I have taken a hiatus from contributing to Poppytalk for the last year but I'm back now with a new monthly column all about...you guessed it...COLLECTING! In this column, I'll showcase various collections (some famous, some not), interview collectors, share some of my collections and offer some resources around collecting. It's my passion, and I am excited to share with you.

Today I'm going to be a little self indulgent and talk a little bit about my book that just came out last week. It is, as many of you already know, all about my collections! In addition to full page images of the 365 collections photos in chronological order, it also includes: photos of my home and studio; an essay by Fritz Karch Collections Editor at Martha Stewart Living; and an essay by me about how I came to collect stuff, how I started my Collection a Day project and my thoughts on collecting.

As some of you may know, I started a project on January 1, 2010 in which I posted a photograph (and occasionally a drawing or painting) of one of my collections every day for an entire year. I posted those images on a blog called Collection a Day, 2010 . The blog became very popular with folks and pretty quickly I had loads of daily visitors. Sometime last spring, I got an email from Janine Vangool at UPPERCASE publishing. I've known Janine for about 5 years and have collaborated with her before on a much smaller scale at her gallery and in UPPERCASE Magazine. She asked me if I'd be interested in making a book of my project. I'd already been contacted by other publishers showing interest, but was secretly waiting for Janine to email me! If I was going to make a book from the project, I wanted more than anything for her to design it.

So at that moment we started to concept the book and began working on it shortly thereafter. Most of the ingenious design in the book (the size, layout, color choices, cover, the tin it comes in, etc) were all Janine's doing, but every step along the way she consulted me about the direction the book should take. It was a wonderful and easy collaboration! Around December 2010, things really started to kick into full gear. Our goal was to have the book printed and available in March 2011. We had to work quickly! At the end of December, I wrapped up the project, finished my essay for the book, and sent her all the photos of my home and studio that would be included. Janine then did the hard work of finishing the layout and all the other third party negotiations that come with printing 5000 copies of a book and a collectable tin.

Miraculously, in less than three months since the project was finished, we had a book! And I love it so much. Here are a few images of the inside:

You can purchase the book here along with some other Collection a Day goodies.
You can purchase a few prints of some of my collections here .
You can download free "collections" wallpaper for your desktop here .

I'll be back next month with something new! Stay tuned.
Lisa