The Gathering and the Menagerie
I promised in some of my previous posts to write about the Menagerie, since Menagerie friends are frequently featured in my fountain pen posts. It’s rather simple — over the years, I have gathered quite a few animal figurines; and just as my fountain pens are the Gathering, the animal figurines are the Menagerie.
In Collected: Living with the Things you Love, authors Karch and Robertson list the Zoologist among the fifteen types of collectors (it’s an older book, but still on Amazon - affiliate link - or elsewhere; I love this book). The Zoologist is a collector who is drawn to animal motifs, usually to a single type of animal, and often to figurines. This is an arbitrary classification — but making and collecting animal art is an ancient human impulse that goes back to the dawn of time, when people scribbled on cave walls, and probably even before that.
Consider the bear, for example. Since prehistoric times, some humans were co-territorial with bears, feared bears, hunted bears, made remedies and clothing from bear fat and furs, were eaten by bears, carved bear figurines and wore them as amulets, told stories of marriage to bears, read and wrote about bears, eaten [gummy] bears - and the list goes on. Bears are awesome. I love bears myself.
The Bear of Słupsk is an amber bear from the Neolithic period, found in a peat bog in Poland. It is made of amber, and it cannot really stand all that well - it was probably worn as an amulet. This bear has been making rounds online for years, and is always compared to a gummy bear.
This contemporary amber bear from the Menagerie is probably carved by one of the artists from the Zuni Pueblo. I found the bear in a Kansas City antique mall, priced ridiculously low; when the cashier saw the bear and the price I was paying, he almost refused to part with it! I love this bear. He has round pine flakes in him, and from the shape of the flakes, I believe the amber itself is Baltic. The bear is signed, but I cannot make out the signature. Perhaps “MN.”
This amber bear from the mesolithic period is from The National Museum of Denmark. It is a part of a collection of magical amber animals found in Denmark, which include a collection of five bears, a bird, and an elk. These Stone Age animals are difficult to date, but they are at least three thousand years old, maybe older. The curators explain, “The small amber animals are beautiful and decorative, but what can they have been used for? Faint grooves, which were probably created by the rubbing of a string, can be seen around the necks of the amber bears. In this way they could be worn as pendants or amulets. The bear has always played an important role for hunters living in the northern hemisphere. Perhaps this is because of its human traits.”
Gummy Bears. Familiar to most kids in the West, gummy bears were first manufactured by the German confectioner Hans Riegel, who reportedly modeled them on dancing bears of early 20th century street fairs. He wanted to give his candy “a face and a personality,” according to this fascinating Smithsonian article about the history of the Haribo bears. Who could say no to that?
One of the greatest joys of collecting anything is the twin principle of repetition and variety. You bring together objects that belong to the same category. Their togetherness creates a collection - a grouping, a gathering, an assembly; yet each item is different from the other. This always reminds me of Alan Dundes’s definition of folklore - things are folkloric when they have both multiple existence and variation. The Stone Age amber animals are folk art - they are similar enough to exist in a grouping, yet each of them is different from the other. The Bear of Słupsk has been alive for thousands of years through the labor of an anonymous artisan who made a bear figurine which was similar to other such figurines, yet also unique. In the twenty-first century, the Bear of Słupsk reminds people of gummy bears, which the original artisan had never seen. According to most folklorists, mass-produced items cannot be folklore. Yet, the gummies fill a small, translucent, bear-shaped void that goes all the way back to the mesolithic. Fountain pens, whether mass-produced or artisan-made, evoke similar feelings in those of us who love them. The pens are not just items - they acquire a talismanic quality, connecting us to other writers, other times, and other collections.
Of course, you can combine both worlds with such fabulous animal-decorated fountain pens as Montblanc Rouge et Noir Heritage, Montblanc Agatha Christie, Montblanc Imperial Dragon, Namiki Yukari Lioness and Cubs, and many other offerings. I only have one (so far): the Onoto Keats. Someone has put a bird on it.
Mini pumpkin pie left over from feasting, coffee, my Onoto Keats fountain pen, and Menagerie friends beadbird and alabaster rabbit.
I often think about my collecting interests as connected through a special kind of aliveness I sense in the objects I’m drawn to. The idea that objects have lives is ancient in itself. Those who have large, beloved libraries may may feel that the books are friends, or that they talk to each other at night, when humans are asleep. Certainly some of my things get along with my other things; many Menagerie friends are fascinated by pens. The world of the Gathering and the Menagerie is real in a way most people don’t talk about; it is a world that invites you to linger.
While the Zoologist collector is supposed to stick with one kind of animal, at least according to Karch and Robertson, my interests are more expansive. I’m not looking for any particular animals, but rather finding Menagerie friends here and there. They have personalities, and I know them when I see them. And now you’ll know them when you see them, too.
My midcentury Danish rolltop desk with an open copy of Collected, a box with some fountain pens, and a few Menagerie friends.