Wonderfully weird

Michael Collins OBE and I have something in common, but sadly it’s not the gong he was awarded in the Queen’s Golden Jubilee birthday honours, or that he’s just published his first book.

No, it’s how he and I both started to get interested in antiques and collecting: down a hole in a Victorian rubbish dump.

For me, it was the discovery that an area of my home town, romantically called Fol Hollow, was actually a derivation of Foul Hollow, because a century or more ago that was where the residents dumped all their waste.Read more »

Hooked on collecting

When was the zip fastener invented? Apparently, one Elias Howe came up with what he called "an automatic continuous clothing closure" in 1851. He patented the idea but it never came to market, possibly because he was too busy with his other invention: the sewing machine.

It was a further 40 years before another American, Whitcomb Judson, patented a similar "Clasp Locker", but even that was only ever used for fasting shoes, seen from the first time at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.

The zipper we know it today, based on interlocking teeth, was invented by an employee of Judson's, Swedish scientist Gideon Sundback in 1913.Read more »