CONFESSIONS OF A SOUVENIR HUNTER
Griff Rhys Jones on the urge to gather stuff as you go
The least practical souvenir I ever considered dragging home was a 16ft dugout canoe. I found it lying on a beach on Mer, the most easterly of the Torres Strait Islands between Australia and Papua New Guinea. Jonny, whose beach it was, told me it had been washed down from New Guinea on a freak high tide. I loved it. What an artefact. He was going to fibreglass the bottom and stick an outboard engine on the back. “It’ll go some then,” he said. Naturally, I yearned for this magnificent ethnographic artefact without Jonny’s “improvements”.
Jonny shrugged. He had others. He was happy to give me this one. But short of paddling it back to the mainland myself, how was I going to get the canoe back to my house in London with its collection of worldwide junk faithfully tolerated and curated by Mrs Jones? I left it, and contented myself with a fly whisk and a large drum instead.
Not all “stuff” stimulates my interest. I can visit Cologne, as I did a few weeks ago, and wander acres of Christmas market unmoved by frosted baubles or porcelain tea lamps. Take me off the beaten track, however, and I start sniffing about.
In Morocco, I found something more worthy of consideration — a bucket made of recycled tyres. Brilliant. Now they are everywhere. But I still have mine.
Looking around me now, in my trophy room caked in dust, I can see a couple of Ga dolls from Accra in Ghana, a stuffed boar’s head from Deyrolle taxidermy in Paris, a cluster of scarlet chapati rolling pins from Rajasthan, a nondescript red lacquer box from Burma, and other junk.
I particularly like textiles: Ikat tie-dyed sarongs, Burmese weaving, Berber blankets (eaten, when we got home, by whatever was living in their folds), suzanis, felt rugs, Pathan stuff, hats . . .
There are dealers everywhere waiting for me — but I am not alone. I was once in Bhuj, in the Kutch district of Gujarat, western India, sitting with Mr Wazir in his shop full of pachedi and embroidered wedding masks. He looked at me quizzically, then suddenly asked: “Do you know Lord McAlpine?” (the late treasurer of the Conservative Party).
“Not well, but we have met,” I replied truthfully.
“He came here and bought many things.” I nodded. My evident bemusement was caused by the fact that, a year previously, I had sat in a vintage rug shop off the Jemaa el-Fnaa square in Marrakech, having exactly the same conversation with the dealer. My noble Lord ended up holding auctions at Christie’s to offload the department storesized hoards of junk he had accumulated.
I am just a beginner. Lord McAlpine certainly wouldn’t have balked at the dugout canoe.
●
L