On Keeping a Catalogue

Collectors fall into two camps. There are those who keep records and those who say they intend to. I belonged for years to the second camp, and I lost things because of it.

Number everything

Every object gets a number, written small in pencil or on a tag, and the same number goes in the book. It does not need to mean anything. Mine run in simple order: 1, 2, 3, as they arrive. A date-based system sounds smarter and is not, because you will forget the year and then the entire scheme fails.

The number is the link between the thing and its story. Without it, you have an object and a vague memory. With it, you have a record.

The fields

A catalogue entry can be elaborate, and mine isn't. I keep seven fields.

• Number. As above.

• Name. What it is, plainly. "Tin, round, lid hinged."

• Description. What a stranger could use to recognise it.

• Measurements. Height, width, depth. A ruler, not an estimate.

• Condition. The honest state, including damage.

• Origin. Where and when it came to me, and anything I was told.

• Notes. Everything else.

That is all. I have seen far longer forms. They tend to be abandoned by the fortieth object.

Write it down that day, and describe it plainly

The entry should be written the day the object arrives, while the market stall or the seller's voice is still clear. A week later, the story has already started to fade, and in a year you will be making it up.

When I forget, and sometimes I do, I mark the entry with a small cross. It says: reconstructed. It is a modest courtesy to the reader, which means the future me.

On describing things. Describe what is there, not what you feel about it. "A brass thimble, worn smooth at the rim, with a hallmark I cannot read" is a good description. "A lovely old thimble" is a sentiment. Both have their place, and the second belongs in the notes.

Always photograph. Take the picture on a plain surface in plain light, next to a ruler if you can. A photograph answers questions the text never will.

The entry I would never skip

Origin. Always, always origin. I mean not only where you bought it, but what the seller said, even if you suspect it isn't true. A story you were told is evidence of something, even if what it shows is only how objects are sold.

I once wrote down, for a small cracked jug, "the seller said it belonged to her grandmother and that she never liked it." Ten years later that sentence is the whole charm of the object.

Backups

Keep a second copy. A photograph of each page, in a different place. I know a collector who lost a lifetime of notes to a flooded cellar and began again at seventy. He did not complain. He just started numbering at one.