Inventory : Collected, Vol. 2, No. 2 1997 The world according to Dewey, Simon Neville, pg 34:
There are 2 types of institutional collection; the indexical collection and the museum collection. This distinction hinges upon an understanding of 'whole' and 'fragment'. Within the indexical collection, items that together compromise the collection as 'whole', are 'fragments' of that collection. Within the museum the same items become 'whole' though an act of presentation that serves to isolate the item as a distinct object, removing it from an archival space where it would have existed within an array of similar objects descriptively understood as a class within a general taxonomy, to become a proper name.
Abject/Collect, Nick Norton, pg 37:
Yet how pointless, to embark upon a collection that will be killed if complete, will kill us if never completed.
The Ticket Collectors, John Churcher, pg 41:
For many patients the closed world of the railways fulfils he same function as the pub for alcoholics; providing an ideal milieu and cover for their activities.
A botanical enthusiast informs me that there are at least 300 genera of rushes and that while the difference between many of them is extremely slight an interest in rushes is not incompatible with leading a relatively normal life. On the other hand grasses have been divided up into 600 genera and 10,000 species. In typical English meadow or field an expert working on his hands and knees , with a microscope, from dawn to dusk might identify upwards of 100 species or sub-species, the following day perhaps another 50. The perils are obvious. As some will attest that with recreational drugs one things leads to another, all too often today's 'rushman' is tomorrow hooked on grass.
From Soane to Soane, Calum Storrie, pg 44:
Every doll (especially the doll that cannot be played with) presents itself as 'us' made small. Each railway station, car, gun and doll's house shows us our world made small. Of course by juxtaposing different scales of object this world is made absurd. So what, at first, appears as a way of simply relating to the world (especially the world of made things) is actually a mad tableau which defies coherence.
Waste, Residues and Traces: Collecting As A Form Of Consumption, Adam Scrivener, pg 94:
Collecting also seeks the most rare, the unique. In an age of undifferentiated mass-production the aura of the unique object still has power.
For the museum, completion is the ultimate desire - to collect or accurately represent everything of a certain type or with the widest and most detailed scope possible; where for the private collector, it is to be feared and deferred - the final item spells death where perhaps only a dispersal or selling off can begin the process anew.