"The collector is a happy man." — said Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A collection doesn't begin with an object, but with a feeling. With that moment when something suddenly responds: it's yours.

Antique objects are unpredictable in what they touch the soul. An old handbag buckle, an engraved seashell, a porcelain doll, a coin or an ostrich feather fan… The object, on the surface, has already lived its life — and suddenly, a second one begins.

A collection is a path towards a whole — not according to rules, but by happy chance, almost unreasonable obstinacy, ardent desire and silent patience.

Collecting is a way of seeing, "erasing accidental features." And perhaps that's why the collector is truly happy: he knows how to see, to recognize what is "his own" and to recompose a whole — in objects as well as in himself.

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