The Beauty Collectors

Words, like currencies, suffer from inflation, and among the presently debased there is no worse invalid than "collector." Anything can be collected, and most things are, including old razor blades, hubcaps and paintings. If you keep them and do not throw them away, all at once you are a collector. Provided he saves them afterwards, a person who picks up candy wrappers is a collector. What makes him different from the distinguished donor of three less distinguished baroque portraits to a museum? For one thing, does he get fun out of it? If he does, he may be more a collector than the donor whose eye is on the tax break. It is not the absolute value (a created thing, anyway) but the value to the collector which decides the worth to him. If he goes on to classify his oddments and shape them into sequence and study the history of printing and advertising which made them possible, he may even become a connoisseur, if a highly specialized one.

What is the pleasure that he gains from this? We all know the figure of the passionate butterfly pursuer with his net. What drives him? It is possible that he finds, rolled into one special joy: the thrill of the chase as he tracks down a new, enticing acquisition; the lure of appraisal odds and fortune, as at the races, roulette tables or a brokerage firm; the growth of his own knowledge; a creative pride in the assembling and an owner's pride in having something real, particular and lasting.

Of lasting man-made substances, the most obstinate one is clay. There is nothing so permanent as a pot. It neither rusts nor disintegrates and most fired colors do not fade. Short of being ground to powder, it remains difficult to destroy. Even in a hundred pieces, ceramic pieces can be glued together again. Fittingly then, the most durable image of beauty in English is also a pot, though most people think of it as the Grecian urn.

You can't just pick those up any more, though, as Thomas Hoving demonstrated not so long ago at the Metropolitan. One kind of ware in clay you can acquire, if not pick up, is the Indian pot, the kind being made by living artists here in the Southwest. The world is not exactly full of vital and continuing cultural traditions any more, but this is one.

Nobody ever yet got into a collecting affair for that kind of a reason. At base it's a matter of feeling. "Love at first sight," is the way Dennis Lyon describes it, speaking as one who started with "one crazy pot" a short time back and now enjoys a pristine, select and lovely in itself collection of Pueblo pottery.

As in many matters of the heart, the first bait was simply aesthetic attraction. A gem and germ of the whole venture was a small burnt sienna colored pot with turquoise inlay made by Tony Da. The Lyons were not seeking gems those days but groceries, making those trips to town that summer families make for society and supplies, but among the ships and sealing wax the pot, to be seen at Don Hoel's, kept making itself noticed. They bought it. It was here that the difference between collecting and just buying things set in. Guided by some unseen angel or a schooled investment sense, or both, the Lyons took time to look and learn before they purchased any more, reading and visiting the Heard Museum, going just looking to stores and trading posts. As Dennis Lyon, who would do it all over again, recommends, "You should buy very little. Just let yourself absorb it for a while. My first advice is to be very careful about whom you deal with. The next thing when you feel confident, buy what appeals to you. You'll end up better if you buy what you love yourself.

Before long the Lyons found themselves with a number of pieces by artists from the Rio Grande area (to which they had