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| after Antonio Canova Venus Italica 19th century marble Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
"There are, at bottom, two sorts of philosophy and two ways of noting down thoughts. One is to sow them in the snow – or, if you prefer, in the fire clay – of pages; Saturn is the reader to contemplate their increase, and indeed to harvest their flower (the meaning) or their fruit (the verbal expression). The other way is to bury them with dignity and erect as sepulcher above their grave the image, the metaphor – cold and barren marble."
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| Berthel Thorvaldsen Ganymede after 1816 marble Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Imperial Porcelain Factory, Russia Inkstand - Cupid bearing Celestial Sphere ca. 1825-30 porcelain Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
"Important in regard to collecting: the fact that the object is detached from all original functions of its utility makes it the more decided in its meaning. It functions now as a true encyclopedia of all knowledge of the epoch, the landscape, the industry, and the owner from which it comes."
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| Joseph Gott Little Red Riding Hood 1827 terracotta Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Joseph Gott Little Red Riding Hood 1827 terracotta Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
"Interiors of our childhood days as laboratories for the demonstration of ghostly phenomena. Experimental relations. The forbidden book. Tempo of reading: two anxieties, on different levels, vie with one another. The bookcase with the oval panes from which it was taken. Vaccination with apparitions. The other prophylaxis: optical illusions."
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| Anonymous French Manufactory Putto on Dolphin ca. 1800-1850 glazed ceramic Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Anonymous French sculptor Hercules 19th century terracotta Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
"The deepest enchantment of the collector: to put things under a spell, as though at a touch of the magic wand, so that all at once, while a last shudder runs over them, they are transfixed. All architecture becomes pedestal, socle, frame, antique memory room."
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| Albert Ernest Carrier-Belleuse The Messiah 1867 terracotta Clark Art Institute |
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| Jonathan Church Harmer Urn with Rams' Heads before 1849 molded terracotta relief Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
"Fashion inheres in the darkness of the lived moment, but in the collective darkness. – Fashion and architecture (in the nineteenth century) belong to the dream consciousness of the collective. We must look into how it awakes. For example, in advertising. Would awakening be the synthesis derived from the thesis of dream consciousness and the antithesis of waking consciousness?"
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| Swansea Pottery Manufactory Bracket with Nereid supporting Net ca. 1850 molded terracotta Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Swansea Pottery Manufactory Bracket with Triton supporting Net ca. 1850 molded terracotta Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Anonymous Dutch sculptor Rose-branch fashioned from scrap of gunboat after 1832 iron Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
"Happiness of the collector, happiness of the solitary: tête-à-tête with things. Is not this the felicity that suffuses our memories – that in them we are alone with particular things, which range about us in their silence, and that even the people who haunt our thoughts then partake in this steadfast, confederate silence of things?"
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| Erik August Kollin Bowl 1880s agate, silver-gilt, almandines Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Venetian Glass Pair of buckets 19th century British Museum bequeathed by Sir William Temple |
"Method of this project: literary montage. I needn't say anything. Merely show. I shall appropriate no ingenious formulations, purloin no valuables. But the rags, the refuse – these I will not describe but put on display."
– quotations are by Walter Benjamin, from the "First Sketches" section appended to The Arcades Project, originally compiled between 1927 and 1939, translated into English by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin for Harvard University Press, 1999