Michael Hall, PhD, Curator of Ceramics, the Capelain Collection, and Curator of the Rothschild family collections, Exbury Estate, Hampshire, Great Britain
“The psychology of collecting is a difficult subject for any author, but for one who tries to understand the problems of inheriting a collection, watching collections being formed and creating a collection of one’s own, the difficulties are multiple. Joram Piatigorsky deals with the blessings and responsibilities of the first, describes his parents’ grapple with their own acquistional passions and then, charmingly and thoroughly self-deprecatingly, analyses himself. Very few collectors have been able to adequately express their pangs and joys, feelings that come from the scent, the hunt, the chase and the success – or failure – that collectors’ experience, but he does it and does it with conviction and passion.
“The scientific and thoroughly detached elements of Piatigorsky’s working life should qualify him fully to be able to write dispassionately about the art he himself collects, of the Inuit tribes of northern America. The clear and elegant prose on the theme of collecting reveals a dedication and self-understanding that is rare.”
