TRADITIONAL WOODWORKING TOOLS. A HISTORIAN’S COLLECTION

Abstract

The paper focuses on a private collection of woodworking tools created in Warsaw in 1982–2020, covering over 400 items, mainly Polish, but also German, Austrian, English, French, and American. It presents the genesis of the collection, methods of its development, internal structure, and the collection study modes. The presentation is accompanied by comments dealing with the importance of a collection of tools, or more broadly of items not widely considered to be socially prestigious, seen against the phenomenon of collecting perceived as an element of ‘luxury consumption for show’, as well as by the first attempts at comparing collecting realities and the position of woodworking tools in the hierarchy of museum objects in Poland and European countries.