Catalogue: The Incidental Collector

How do you tell the story, in a slim single volume, of how a collection is created?

You could start in the saleroom, the collector edging forward on his seat, or returning from Czechoslovakia with Sovietera glassware in his bags.

There is the mundane truth of the newlyweds with a house to fill; a wife with an eye for the shockingly new potters of the Central School. You could ask the collector himself, were he not so modest.

Instead, the trustees invited guest writers to contribute to a book that celebrates the public launch of the Ken Stradling Collection.

They are Christopher Lloyd (former surveyor of the Queen’s pictures), writer David Whiting, glass expert Graham McLaren and, intriguingly, Max Gane, great-grandson of Crofton Gane who brought Bauhaus designer Marcel Breuer to Bristol to shake up English furniture-making and near-bankrupt the Gane company.

It’s just such a radical, spirited rebellion that epitomises Stradling’s own 60-year-and still counting career at the Bristol Guild of Applied Art, the little shop he walked into in 1948 that is now an emporium of fine design.

And, as Stradling and the Guild are inseparable, The Incidental Collector had also to make the imagined boundary between individual studio pieces and industrial goods all but disappear – or at least explain how a Dyson prototype can sit happily next to a Picasso-esque Sam Haile bowl.

Personal collections

The Ken Stradling Collection is a very personal view of the world comprising furniture, pottery, glass, fine art and crafts (and some things that defy description).

And it’s still growing – with Stradling’s fedora hat and tieless black shirt bestowing a bohemian air on the salerooms, and a newly created trust to manage and exhibit the hundreds of pieces.

The trust has refurbished a building not only to show the collection but also to create a study space to fulfil Stradling’s wishes that students and practitioners should be able to examine at close quarters (and without protective glass cases) the best of British and international design.

It’s a demanding role for a small trust; why not hand over the collection to an established museum? The answer to that question is touched on in the text: curators nationwide should read it and puzzle over the conclusion.

Stephen Morris is a freelance photographer and book designer.

To view the Ken Stradling Collection, email Julia Donnelly on juliadonnelly@stradlingcollection.org