What records do you keep of your collection?

[Ian]

In a recent discussion, Alan Maisey made some really important, from the heart, comments that struck me as worthy of a whole separate topic. Just how do folks keep records of their weapons collection? What do you want from those records?

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

Forgive me.

I am old, I am tired, and I am sick to my guts as what I personally see as a rather ill-informed and unrealistic expectation that everything in the field of S.E. Asian material culture can be labelled and classified using information that is so incomplete and erroneous as to be laughable.

It would please me greatly if collectors and students in our particular field of study would cease the patently unrealistic and adopt a more measured approach.

In places where we can get half a dozen different names for the same object by going to half a dozen different houses a few kilometers apart, how wise is it to be too definite about anything?

We all know that material objects --- not just weapons, but all sorts of manufactured items --- move all over the region and have done so for more than a 1000 years.

Yes, it is in the nature of man to want to label things, but it would perhaps be more acceptable if we used attributions, or references, for instance :-

"A gizmo, collected 1995 Kaba-Kaba, Bali, Indonesia, location of origin:- attributed to Karanganyar, Jawa Tengah, circa 1893 (after Sutrisno)"

with this type of approach we say where we acquired the thing, we say where we think it might be from, we say what period we think it might be from, and we give the reference for our label:- Sutrisno.

There is a very nice little quote that I think is attributed to Lao Tzu:-

"The wise seem confused, knowing the imperfection of their understanding"

Whether said out of tiredness or frustration, these are profoundly wise words!

In a sense we are all "students" of our passion, and it has concerned me for some time that I needed to put together a catalogue of my collection that was both informative to me, helpful for posting on this Forum, and useful for buying and selling (mainly selling these days as I'm getting older and don't want to leave my wife with an enormous task). That combination has proven elusive, even after several attempts.

After reading Albert von Zonneveld's book on Indonesian arms, I am now in the process of completely reorganizing the cataloguing system for my collection. A recent international move was a major impetus, driven by the necessity of dealing with Australian Customs officials concerning importation of my collection of 1000+ items (a frustrating and completely off topic subject!).

I settled on a series of Xcel spreadsheets organized by Country/Geographic Region of Origin:

Individual sheets are organized by Country/Region and assigned a code [e.g. Mainland SE Asia, MSEA; India, IND; Philippines, PHI, Africa, AFR; etc.; plus a grab bag of items identified simply as Miscellaneous, MISC)

Within each of these Country/Geographic Regions, I have set up a sheet with the following columns:

• Identification number (starting at 1000 for each sheet)
• Name(s) of item (common name, other names)
• Attributed Age/Period
• Dimensions (linear dimensions, weight)
• Date of acquisition
• Place of acquisition (if online, then country of purchase)
• Purchase price (converted to a common currency--in my case USD)
• Insured value (used for insurance and tax purposes)
• Date sold
• Where/How sold (direct sale, auction site, online)
• Name and address of buyer
• Selling price
• Picture (single picture of overall item)
• Notes/Reference(s)--includes a wide variety of information (details of acquisition, more precise localization of origin, special materials used in construction, description used in sale of item, citations of relevant literature and online sources, including URLs to online sites such as this Forum)

As you can see, this is a mixture of collecting, research, and business (buying/selling/insurance) interests. My goal is to have sold off nearly everything over the next 10 years and be left with an extensive digital archive to ponder in my declining years. (My wife says I'm already declining )

So my question to this Forum is, What have you found useful in describing your collection and using it for reference purposes?

Ian.