Other People’s Collections IV

Upstairs in the Chicago Children’s Museum there is a fascinating room titled Michael’s Museum.

There is a regular sized door to the right of the small door and visitors who venture inside find more than 100 of the collections of Michael Horvich. Michael has always collected items that are “small in scale” and at first they were displayed throughout his house. When they were moved to their own room and special glass cases were constructed, the house’s guest room was renamed Michael’s Museum. In 2011 the museum moved to the Chicago Children’s Museum.

On the Michael’s Museum website Michael says that he has always been on the lookout for “small, magical, interesting, romantic, and unique items” to add to his collections which he calls “Discoverings, trinkets, curiosities, small things, or treasures” He occasionally uses the word miniatures but he doesn’t really like it. He says a lot of his small items remind him of the “olden days” of his childhood.

About collecting Michael says, “I find there is magic in numbers and if I can collect many of the same identical item, I do” A numbered list of his collections includes #93 Plastic Boxes and #100 Pencil Nubs.

His collections also include Day of the Dead items and Minature North American Indian Arts and Crafts.

And lots of tiny books.

There are so many items here. Some of them have labels indicating they are on loan from other people’s collections. One of the most fascinating to me were the small dolls on this shelf labeled “Frozen Charlottes”. According to Wikipedia they are china dolls made between c1850 to c1920. The name comes from an American folk ballad “Fair Charlotte” based on the poem “A Corpse Going to a Ball” by Seba Smith, which “tells of a young girl called Charlotte who refused to wrap up warmly to go on a sleigh ride because she did not want to cover up her party dress; she froze to death during the journey.”

I could spend hours looking at all the “tiny treasures” and I suspect many other grown ups could too. Unfortunately, you need to be accompanying a child to come to the museum and the ones I’ve attended with don’t spend much time here. Since I volunteer at the museum I can stop by on my own but I wish it was accessible to other collectors as well. Michael’s Museum does have it’s own website so it is possible to see some of the collection on line. www.michaelsmuseum.org