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RECEIVED wisdom has it that if you get rid of any possession that doesn’t ‘spark joy’, your house will magically turn into a minimalist haven with only the odd flower vase clouding tables and cabinets. The implication. The home organisers that first came up with this notion can’t possibly know any collectors: it’s precisely because they find pleasure in old toys, silver boxes or dinosaur footprints that their houses (and barns and sheds) are full to bursting. This instinct to amass and preserve is far deeper seated than the throwaway culture of the past decades. As early as the 3rd millennium BC, Mesopotamian rulers had a taste for collecting exotica, not least lapis lazuli, birds from faraway lands and ‘fish eyes’ (probably saltwater pearls).
