Is this a 'Collection', or just 'More than One of its Kind'?

I've decided that there's a difference between a collector and someone who just owns more than one of everything.   When I was looking around for something to contribute to Lesley's challenge to other bloggers to show their collections, I couldn't help concluding that I definitely fall into the latter category.  

My stamp-collecting passion faded in about 1962, having survived an attempt by my youngest sister to chew most of my Magyar Posta treasures, perhaps because they portrayed soft fruits of the region.

Since then, although I have gathered a lot of stuff around me, it's been more a case of "oh there's one of those things I've already got two of, perhaps I'd better get it to go with the others".  

Many many moons ago, I developed a keen nose for identifying places that Victorians dumped their household waste.   Not necessarily the most useful faculty, I grant you, but digging up an old rubbish-dump did provide an occasional diversion when the weekend had little else to offer.    As a result, I became the proud owner of a large collection of Bovril jars.   They were thankfully disposed of long ago, but I did keep a handful of little bottles just for sentimental reasons.

ribbed bottles, denoting that the contents could be poisonous if taken in quantity

oh, I seem to have kept one teenytiny Bovril jar after all....

hardly big enough to contain a tablespoonful

 Eiffel Tower fruit juice bottle

The Foster Clark company was founded by George (who was for a while Mayor of Maidstone in Kent) in 1890 and these pale green glass bottles contained concentrated lemon juice, probably used more for culinary purposes than for drinking.

These stoneware ink bottles were picked up in a ploughed field (near Ayot St. Lawrence, the home of George Bernard Shaw - do you think he dipped his knib in them?) and I am truly besotted  with them.   I love the colour, the weight, the warmth, shape and size of them and admire the way they withstood many years' daily use and survived being buried for years before I came across them.  They are always out on display somewhere, so that I can see them all the time.

These old broken clay pipes are special, too.  I love the decorative detail they have been given, despite the fact that they were workaday objects destined to have a very short life.     My vegetable garden is always turning up pipe-stems, broken by their owner probably 100 years ago or more.

I invariably rescue any bits of broken china I find in the garden or when walking alongside a ploughed field.   Lots of it is blue-and-white, maybe a cup handle or the rim of a marmalade jar.  

this one is a strange one, with a little hatchling making its way into the world

Bits of broken china were an important part of my mum's play in the late 1920's.   In the back yard of her Glasgow home, mud pies were made and sold, the local currency being small shards of broken plate found in the household tip.   Anything with a gold rim was treasure indeed.   It must be in my genes!

What do you collect?

             Chrissie