About The Collector
I have been collecting brooches for over 30 years. I was given my first piece of jewellery by my grandmother when I was six years old. It started a passion that has not diminished in over fifty years. I don’t remember which was my first brooch, but I used to wear them on my business suits. Back then, ‘business’ dress was the order of the day. The only way I could show any individuality was a fancy brooch on the lapel. I started in a small way with a discrete gold pin, but as time went on they became bigger and bolder.
There are over 900 in my collection. I wear all my brooches and I will buy one because I like the design, the colour, or it just speaks to me. Some are favourites and I wear regularly: a small stone cameo set in gold from the 1850s, a large yellow spray of flowers by the designer Staret from the 1940s, a red metal and paste abstract circle from the 1950s and a silver Möbius knot by Vinianna Torun Bülow for Georg Jensen from the 21st century.
Some I buy just to go with something special. I have a Danecraft knitting brooch, as a knitter, I just couldn’t resist that one. And for Christmas, I have a variety of festive trees and baubles. My collection continues to grow, and I wear a brooch every day, sometimes two, three, four…
I have a growing number of reference books. I look through them both in terms of identifying a new purchase or sheer wonderment at their beauty and skill of the craftsmen and women who made them. I also use the internet to help when researching a brooch. I have a catalogue of all my brooches and keep them in an 1860 collectors’ cabinet, which originally housed Charles Darwin’s specimens. There are 18 drawers in the cabinet, and I have not filled them all yet!
I buy brooches from anywhere and everywhere, online, antique markets and fairs, auctions, shops and dealers I know. Some have cost a few pounds and one or two have caused me to rein in my expenditure for the rest of the month. Am I going to stop buying brooches? No, there are thousands more to be discovered, investigated and, most importantly, worn.
Not just a brooch collector
I have been making up stories in my head for most of my life. I have taken a number of creative writing courses, including the Open University, which was an interesting if slightly detached experience.
Short stories, and in particular flash fiction, fascinate me both as a writer and reader. I have had work published in magazines, anthologies and in translation. My story Colours that Suit won the Creative Writing section in the City Lit ‘Between the Lines’ 2009. I have organised various community workshops and events supporting short story writing.
I have had a piece published by English PEN in support of Zhu Yufu who was imprisoned in China for writing poetry in the year The Casket of Fictional Delights began. In 2012 as part of Worldwide Reading Day The Casket recorded and published Liu Xiaobo love poem to his wife ‘You Wait for me in Dust’. The poem was read by Menna Bonsels. Liu Xiaobo won the Noble Peace Prize in 2010.
