The Formation of an Everyday Object Collection from the Perspectives of an Ifugao Indigenous Community’s Collector and Contributors

The process of collecting has primarily been studied in the Western context and from the collectors’ perspective. Considering the perspectives of both the collector and the contributors, this essay presents a case study of an everyday object collection in an indigenous community in Ifugao Province, the Philippines. Interviews and participant observations revealed the collector’s motivation and collection-making process, the objects’ production and usage history, and their journey from the contributors’ custody to the collector’s. The collector’s realization about the changing and disappearing local culture motivated this collection, driven by the modern concept of cultural preservation. Contributions followed multiple modes: making (or helping to make), selling, bartering, or giving objects. Such variety was possible only because of the everyday objects’ fluidity in terms of their marketability, reproducibility, and ownership. Thus, everyday object collections are hybrid products of modern concepts and vernacular relationships between people and objects as nurtured by the local community.