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A Source Book of Public Collections in Europe and the USA


The passion for collecting is well documented, with no object seemingly too humble to be overlooked, from the modest postcard to the milk bottle. Today, this passion - which often verges on the obsessive - is fuelled by the sale of objects on-line and by popular television programmes such as The Antiques Road Show. Many of these accumulations of objects, both past and present, have formed the basis of outstanding public collections, with every conceivable collectible immortalized in museums, libraries and historic institutions.


With The Essential Guide to Collectibles, collectors will be able, for the first time, to find public collections in both Europe and the USA relating to their particular obsessions. The book is organized by category and covers an extraordinarily wide range of collectibles - from teddy bears, clocks, coins, corkscrews, guns and rugs to the more unusual, such as barbed wire and erotic art. It has over 2,000 entries on more than 130 collecting topics drawn from more than 1,200 museums. Many of the collections presented in the guide are collections that are often hidden away in reserve because of
a lack of space, money, or due to their fragile condition. This knowledge will enable collectors to plan a tour around a variety of collections held by internationally renowned museums and libraries, as well as those within small local historical associations, cathedrals and country houses.


Alistair McAlpine and Cathy Giangrande are passionate collectors themselves. They have worked on this gazetteer for the past four years, with a desire to share what they have gleaned through their years of extensive travels and hundreds of museum contacts. With this guide both seasoned and would-be collectors alike will now be able to head straight to the best - both to see the accomplishments of others and to be inspired to begin, enhance or enlarge their own collections.


About the Author


Alistair McAlpine has assembled and disassembled more collections in a few decades than most collectors do in a lifetime. Described by Lord Gowrie, former Chairman of Sotheby's and of the Arts Council, as 'having a wonderful eye', he has been a builder, pearl farmer, antiquities dealer, breeder of rare birds, politican, writer and through all these diverse lives a collector in an astonishing range of fields. His collections have ranged from 18th-century garden implements and police truncheons to Roman beads and rare textiles. He is known for his long-running 'World of Interiors' column, and
for many years he wrote a monthly piece for The Spectatoron the highlights of the auction world. He is also the author of several books, including The Servant, Letters to a Young Politician, Journal of a Collector, The Ruthless Leader, his memoirs Once a Jolly Bagman, From Bagman to Swagman, and Collecting & Display with Cathy Giangrande.


Cathy Giangrande read art history and chemistry and later received a degree in archaeological conservation from University College London. As a conservator she has worked at museums in the USA and Britain, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and, when its home was the Tower of London, the Royal Armouries. Her interest in collections hidden away in store at museums led to a TV series for Discovery Channel, called Unseen Treasures. Combining her scuba diving and conservation skills, she has worked for over twenty years on underwater archaeological sites. Her exploits have taken
her to uninhabited islands in the North Aegean and , most recently, off the coast of Israel with Dr Robert Ballard, conserving artefacts from Phoenician shipwrecks (750BC). Author of several papers on conservation, she is co-author, with Alistair McAlpine, of Collecting & Display.

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