Photo by Monique Schoenfeld, Town Crier
Rewa Hulden-Hodges's eyes twinkle as she talks about her pelican figurines, which have grown to a collection of 61 "birds." The Los Altos resident is holding the first one she bought. She said the collection grew out of memories of trips to Half Moon Bay and Tiburon with her late husband.
Town Crier Staff Writer
Residents share passion for their collections: Pelicans and birdhouses and cartoons
eggy Goodman collects birdhouses. And anything depicting birdhouses or resembling birdhouses. She has napkins with birdhouse pictures; napkin rings shaped like a birdhouse with the napkin going through the hole; a wooden birdhouse breadbox with a hinged roof that lifts. Her CD cabinet stands tall with a peaked birdhouse roof and a perch on top.
Last year she and her husband added a breakfast room to the kitchen, "to contain the collection," said the 20-year Los Altos resident.
"Everything I get is 'birdhousie,'" she said. Including clothes. She has three birdhouse outfits - "two warm weather options and one cold weather option," she said.
Goodman is not alone in the delight she takes in collecting. People collect everything from swizzle sticks found at flea markets to pricey porcelain Limoges boxes and Quimper plates.
"Collectibles are toys that grown-ups take seriously," said Werner Muensterberger in his book, "Collecting: An unruly passion."
According to Muensterberger, there is no saturation point for a collector, and there is no average collector.
"Each item has a distinct meaning for the owner," he said. "Collecting is not just recreational but enriching."
Laurie Prioste, owner of Cottage Collectibles, a gift shop in downtown Los Altos, said people collect for many reasons.
"It's fun. It's a challenge. There's always something new," she said. "It's like a treasure hunt."
Pelicans
Rewa Hulden-Hodges, 82, a longtime Los Altos resident, has been collecting pelicans since 1972.
She bought her first one in Santa Cruz, shortly after her first husband died.
"This is a crazy bird," she said holding it up. Its goofy grin looks out from a mop of curly feathers. "I'd always loved pelicans, but I'd never had one."
She and her husband used to drive over to Half Moon Bay or Tiburon for the day and take a lunch and watch the birds, sharing special times together. She never imagined she'd have a pelican collection.
But she does. "I guess it's a part of bringing back our visits to Tiburon," she said. "We used to fish at Moss Beach and Half Moon Bay."
Currently she has 61 pelicans in her collection, "counting the ones outside and my two earrings," she said. "But not my shirt." Colorful pelicans stood out from the blue of her T-shirt.
Each bird in her collection is numbered, and the collection is inventoried. She worried that some day her three children would come in and "have a big garage sale. I wanted them to know what some of the things are worth," she said.
Most of the collection is displayed in a greenhouse window, on glass shelves, in a studio cottage behind her house.
She points out a black onyx pelican she bought at the Foothill College flea market. "There's a rock collector there who sells them."
She has pelicans carved from wood and onyx; made from shells and brass; she has an ironwood pelican from Mexico; and another she bought in Oregon made from volcanic ash from Mt. St. Helens.
The most she ever paid for a pelican was $76. The smallest is a 1.5-inch white porcelain pelican.
"Once you have a few, you keep adding to them. I don't need anymore," she said. Several of the pelicans were gifts. Many she found on trips and brought home as reminders of a special place.
Outside her studio, a gaily painted wooden pelican whirli-gig twirls above her patio cover. A brass wind-chime pelican tinkles in the afternoon breeze. On her patio, flowers grow in a terra cotta pelican pot.
Hulden-Hodges also has a totem pole collection and a dragon collection.
"I like everything. I've got to stop," she chuckled.
Birdhouses
Goodman, 54, said about her birdhouses, "You have what you like around you, and you can enjoy it. As women get older, they find out what they really like, what they find endearing."
All her friends collect. "We all have motifs. One collects parrot things, there's a candle person, a cat person, a camel person and a bear person."
She shops all year for her friends, looking for that special item to match the collection of each.
For herself, "it give me a purpose for going to street fairs."
Some items she orders from catalogs. Like her kitchen clock. Instead of numbers, 12 different birds circle the clock face. On the hour a bird chirps. At noon it's "the full twitter," Goodman said.
One wall in her birdhouse room is painted green, covered with white lattice. Birdhouses hang from every available spot on the lattice: big ones, little ones, metal ones, wooden ones, carved ones, painted ones.
In the center is Goodman's favorite: A birdhouse made from a cowboy boot, labeled "bird's boot camp."
She paid $35 for the boot house. "If I'd gotten the left and the right - and I didn't mind the hole, I could wear them," she said.
Birdhouse Christmas ornaments decorate a lush ficus tree in a corner.
"I leave them on all year round," she said. "A couple look like outhouses, but that's OK because they all have gabled roofs."
And that's what drew Goodman to collecting birdhouses. "I like the pitch of the roof. I have always liked houses and bought houses."
She now owns 34 rental homes. The she moved on to David Winter cottages, which she collects, and has about 80.
But none are as interesting to her as birdhouses, she said.
She admits to a downside of collecting. "I think it is a refined pack rat-ism. When retirement comes and we move to a smaller place, I'll have to make decisions."
Cartoons
Paul Johnson collects cartoons, quotes and jokes. This Mountain View resident reckons he has more than 10,000 cartoons and 330 books of cartoons.
"When I'm feeling a little down or discouraged, I can always find something to laugh at by pulling out some cartoons," he said.
Johnson, who said his age was "confidential," began collecting about 30 years ago.
At first he would think, "Gee, that's funny," then clip it and toss it into a drawer. Then the clippings went into a "fat folder. Then a BIG fat folder. Then I had to do something," he said.
Now he has shelves of books and file drawers of clippings. He collects from "books, magazines, newspapers, friends or wherever I see them," he said. He then makes a copy, and reduces or enlarges so the joke or cartoon can eventually be placed in an 8 1/2- by 11-inch sheet protector for storage in a binder and for easier reading.
Johnson said he does not read a daily newspaper. His best sources, he said, are cartoon books he finds at the used-book sales held by the Friends of the Los Altos Library.
Occasionally he has bought a new book "because it has a cartoon I like." But Johnson, an accountant, prefers finding things on the cheap.
He points out that sources for his collection are readily available, they are usually inexpensive and "there is a great variety and you can 'specialize' in your particular interests."
There are probably 15 or 20 topics he could make a booklet on, he said, but two of his favorites are aging and housekeeping hints for the bachelor - "and they're outrageous," Johnson said, himself a bachelor.
"For instance, one tip is 'don't hard boil an egg in a microwave. It will blow up.' And 'separate four eggs' doesn't mean putting each one in a different place," he said, sounding insulted that anyone would think a bachelor could be such a dork about cooking.
The bottom line for Johnson and his collection is that "it's a hobby that keeps a smile on my face."
Shop, shop, shop
Not everyone builds their collections at second-hand sales and street fairs. Some shop, shop, shop.
Just ask Prioste, the Cottage Collectibles owner. She estimates that half her business is with collectors adding to their collections.
In fact, business is so good that she recently opened a second shop in downtown Los Gatos.
One of her most expensive collectibles are Limoges boxes, that usually cost $120 and above.
But her all-time biggest seller are village scenes made by Department 56, those cute, gabled eight- to 10-inch lighted cottages and shops, seen at Christmastime.
Department 56 makes several styles of villages, the Dickens village, the New England village, the New York village.
People find the one that reminds then of their childhood or a favorite place they lived, or maybe grandma's house.
"I get calls from all over the country," Prioste said, from people wanting to add to their collection. Each year a few new pieces are added to the line and at the same time some pieces are retired.
"And people want that one," the retired one, "to complete their collection."
When new, the village pieces cost between $25 to $40. But once retired, the piece goes way up in price.
"When the collector gets a retired one, it's like winning the lottery," Prioste said.
One collector from San Jose had so many different Department 56 village scenes that he had to build a storage building in his back yard to storm them.
About 12 years ago, two psychiatrists and three psychologists from Johns Hopkins University researched why people collect. They interviewed collectors from all over the world. Their conclusion: people collect for the sheer pleasure and fascination of an object.