ABSTRACT
The ‘museum’ and ‘mantelpiece’ of the title are not intended to be precise and self-explanatory terms but rather to be alliterative and catchy, alluding to the destinies of collectable antiquities, available for purchase and which, rightly or wrongly, have already undergone the process of commodification. It may be helpful to give the reader an insight into the authors’ rather nebulous weighting of meaning behind the two terms. First, such concepts as a public, systematic, classified collection situated in a centre dedicated to guardianship, conservation, scholarship and accessibility are comprised in ‘museum’. ‘Mantelpiece’, on the other hand, has been used to denote the individual and the casual, the quirky and impulsive, the isolated artefact gathering dust in uncategorized splendour. Clearly, such distinctions have been somewhat arbitrarily made and are artificial to a degree. Perhaps the following selection of quotes may illuminate this prefatory apologia however.
