RetroPauseCollectibles
Thematic archive · Collectibles

Collectibles and the thrill of completing a series

Latest additions

1980s

When Fashion Entered the Museum: Rattan Body and a Change of Perspective

The appearance of Rattan Body, by Issey Miyake and Koshige Shochikudo, on Artforum’s March 1982 cover provides a way to examine a broader change: the gradual arrival of contemporary fashion in museums as cultural expression, while acknowledging the material and curatorial limits involved in exhibiting and preserving garments.

Before 1950

Stickers: From Commercial Incentive to the Ritual of Completing an Album

Stickers did not begin as isolated toys. In Spain, the evidence gathered places their antecedents in commercial wrappers from the late nineteenth century, their spread through consumer products in the 1920s, and the sale of packets in the post-war period. This history explains why the album, the duplicate, and swapping form a cultural system of their own.

Contemporary

What a Comics Museum Preserves: Five Certainties and Several Documentary Limits

A critical reading of the available evidence on the Museu del Còmic i la Il·lustració and the value of magazines, booklets, press material and original art as documentary heritage. The article separates what the sources support from what still requires cataloguing, provenance and institutional consultation.

Contemporary

Household Recipe Books: When a Recipe Is Also an Archive

The Museo da Conserva’s #ComidaViejuna campaign invites us to read household recipe books as objects that preserve recipes, visual habits and cultural memory. Drawing on that initiative and sources on food heritage, this piece examines what can—and cannot—be documented when collecting, describing and interpreting everyday papers.

2000s

From Album to Archive: Why Stickers Are Also Heritage

The 2006 opening of Modena’s Museo della Figurina offers a way to examine the sticker as a printed object, a domestic collection, and a cultural document. This guide proposes a careful approach to viewing, cataloguing, and preserving it, while separating established evidence from questions requiring further research.