Preserving the Pack Age
Consumer historian Robert Opie tells how he first came to recognise the value of everyday discarded things, and suggests the need for a new awareness of our recent past.
Having grown up in an environment where books lined every room and corridor, and thinking that every home had its own mini museum, it seemed quite natural to collect things. Indeed, this urge is instinctive in most of us, and many schoolchildren go through a phase of collecting stamps. My own stamp collection gave me an awareness of the wider world and a fascination with design, but after a while there seemed little point in collecting stamps as I realised that everyone else would have a far better collection than me. So I explored new ground by studying other areas of the postal service, such as aerogrammes, postal stationery, stamp booklets and greeting telegrams. This was my ‘apprenticeship’ in collecting. I was also fortunate in having the right parents, the folklorists Iona and Peter Opie.
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