ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the practices and processes of accumulation, exchange and disposal, looks at the aesthetic qualities that gave shrapnel fragments children value and significance. It explores other wartime collecting practices and describes the life histories of children’s collections through accumulation, exchange and use, disposal and their afterlives in sense memories. The practice of collecting, the nature of collections and the character of collectors have been extensively studied by historians, anthropologists and sociologists from a range of different perspectives including examining collecting as a leisure activity, and from the perspective of the histories of antiquarianism and of museums. Collections have been interpreted in relation to cultures and practices of consumption, display and the creation of identities. Childhood and adult collecting practices differ in a number of ways: children tend to take a more hands-on approach to their collections than adults; carrying them around, handling them and allowing others to sort through them as a form of display.
