Instagram and the Art of Arranging: How @foundandchosen brings tiny objects to life
Instagram and the Art of Arranging: How @foundandchosen brings tiny objects to life
How Jane Housham Turns Everyday Finds into Art: A Collector’s Journey
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Collecting Stories is a feature of Landline that invites guests to share meaningful objects from their lives or work and tell the stories behind them.
I have long been interested in the things we choose to collect, keep, and share. One of my favorite collectors who not only collects interesting things but arranges them beautifully is Jane Housham, or @foundandchosen on Instagram. I envisioned this series as a space to highlight people who have fascinating collections and/or have collected great stories about a topic they are passionate about. I am delighted to share an interview with Jane who is both a fascinating collector and a great storyteller about her art and what it means to her.
Name: Jane Housham
Occupation(s): Collector, Writer, Artist, Academic book publisher (daytime job)
Location: Hitchin, UK
I love @foundandchosen! The collection of tiny objects and their artistic arrangement is so captivating both because it is visually beautiful, and inspires so many thoughts about the previous lives of each object in the frame. What drew you to first collect tiny things?
Thanks so much! I’m delighted you like what I do.
I’ve really been drawn to very small things all my life, or at least since I was capable of independent activity. I was an only child with parents who provided a lot of books and art materials but then left me largely to my own devices. I didn’t have many friends until I got to secondary school at the age of eleven, so I used to spend a great deal of time reading novels. The reading inspired solitary games where I invented worlds for the small dolls I loved (Dolly Darlings and rubber Ari dolls).
When I was a bit older, my mother became a keen dolls-house collector and I had a dolls house too, so she and I spent quite a lot of time wallpapering rooms and cutting up old clothes to make carpets. I especially liked to make very small accessories; I knitted with thread on darning needles, and made miniature games compendiums and hot water bottles and the like.
But as a child I wasn’t so much a collector as a keeper of things. I didn’t go hunting for specific things to build a collection, I simply hung on to everything I was given so it gradually accumulated – I still have quite a lot of little bits and pieces that I had as a child. Those are precious to me because sometimes they allow me, fleetingly, to grasp the feeling of being a child again, when your focus on your games and imagination was your whole world.
What are your favorite things to collect?
I do seem to collect an awful lot of different things. What tends to happen is that I’ll find something interesting, such as a very small clock or a plastic dragonfly, and then if I find another one or two, that becomes a ‘live collection’ and I’ll keep it in the front of my mind when I’m raking through boxes of toys in charity shops or at car boot fairs. You’ll see that that’s a fairly fluid situation and depends as much on what I find as what I’ve already got. At a less granular level, I really like to collect miniature versions of machines and tech, such as toy cameras, radios, clocks, typewriters and so on. I’m also quite keen on the rarer plastic animals such as starfish and octopuses. But there’s no end to it, really. And if I’m honest, one of the big drivers is the desire to keep coming up with something fresh for my Instagram posts, so anything goes, really.
When you are finding objects in the wild or in a shop, is there a criteria you have in mind for an ideal tiny object?
I guess when I find a ‘candidate’ object, I do subject it to various judgements. I’d rather get older things than newer, I’d rather get cheap plastic things than elaborate things. Things from the 1960s and 70s probably hit the sweet spot the best, but needless to say I’m constantly contradicting what I’ve just said here. ‘Good’ objects have a certain rightness, a sort of dignity, they aren’t too twee, they aren’t too accurate, they have style and a little bit of wit. That probably sounds pretentious but I know if I love something almost as soon as I see it – I think we all do.
When did you start incorporating knolling, or grouping things in beautiful arrangements into your work?
Well, there are two answers to this. The first is that it was really Instagram that got me started with knolling. I’ve been doing Instagram for about ten years now and I guess it was seeing how other people arranged objects within that classic square that inspired me to start doing it too. The unchanging nature of the square makes me want to see just how much variety I can achieve within it. But the second answer is that I always had a strong organisational bent from a young age. I had a special box of treasures – little bits of cut glass, nice buttons, strangely shaped parts from machines and so on – which I would frequently get out and arrange according to different rules: by size or by colour or by how much I liked them. And, really, that’s exactly what I do on Instagram now.
Did anyone else’s work as an artist or collector inspire you?
I’ve definitely been inspired by Peter Blake’s collections, and by Joseph Cornell’s assemblages in boxes. I like Susan Hiller’s obsessive postcard collections and Kurt Schwitters’ arrangements of rubbish. On Instagram I admire @office.of.collecting and dhinva but there are so many other wonderful ’grammers out there too.
What work does the collecting do for you? As an artist, collector, writer, what do you imagine collecting adds to your life?
Interesting question. At the moment, my active collecting is really driven by what I do on Instagram and it’s taken on a life of its own. The posts must be ‘fed’ with new (old) things in order to stay fresh. I’m nourished by the simple pleasure of putting together these small daily combinations of objects (and the joy of having people respond to them with their own expressions of pleasure).
I get a lot from creating orderliness, from feeling that I’ve got an arrangement ‘right’ (even though of course there would be endless other ‘right’ ways of re-arranging the same objects). I particularly enjoy drilling down into the nuances of colour and really seeing the subtle relationships of one colour to another in some of the colour-based arrangements I do. I also love matching objects to colour charts and the like.
Another aspect of collecting is just the ‘keeping safe’. I like to feel that things get a new life when I find them. I’ll keep them, use them in a fun way, spare them from going to landfill, and add some sort of nebulous value to them just by appreciating them. They also become ‘more’ when they’re grouped together with things in the same category as them. More interesting, more amusing, more valuable to me. My life definitely has a little bit of extra resonance for having all these little heaps of stuff in it as I know the combinations I’ve put together must be unique. I understand that many people strive to have less stuff in their homes, but I’m the opposite.
Did your views on collecting change at all once you started to arrange them and share them on Instagram? Did making the work public change its private meaning?
Another very interesting question! I think there were changes, yes. It all still feels quite a private activity, in spite of sharing it with lots of other people. The act of arranging is mine alone and I like the ‘ta-daa!’ moment of sharing a new post and saying, effectively, ‘Look what I’ve done today’. I am a bit of a show-off, I can’t deny it. I want my work to be seen and liked. I want my writing to be read (but it’s harder to make that happen than I ever imagined – I have ambitions to publish novels…), and I’d also like my paintings to be seen more widely too but there aren’t really enough hours in the day. I have a full-time job as a book publisher and I’m also a terrible dabbler with far too many things I want to do. It would probably have been much better if I’d just focused on a single activity.
What has been the reaction to your work online, or from the public? Do you have any stories of favorite encounters or interactions you’d be comfortable sharing?
People are tremendously generous online – there’s really been nothing but warm responses and comments telling me about things they’ve particularly liked seeing (often that’s things they themselves own or owned, and I absolutely understand the pleasure of seeing something you recognise).
It’s always exciting if someone famous likes a post and I’ve been thrilled by one or two famous likers. I was delighted when Jarvis Cocker from the band Pulp started following me as I’d read his memoir about his own very eclectic collecting and felt he was a kindred spirit. He even had some of the same objects as me, in the photos in his book.
I’ve been lucky to meet some fellow Instagrammers in person. Jessica who runs the Office of Collecting came to visit me when she was over from Las Vegas, which was very nice.
One of the loveliest things has been the way that people very generously send me tiny things in the post. I appreciate that so much and feel a real connection to the senders through their very kind gestures.
What’s your favorite object(s) in the collection? Or favorite arrangement of objects?
If I have a favourite today, it probably won’t be the same one I’d name tomorrow. But some things do stand out. I’m very fond of a set of Riley’s toffee tins with different sets of things on the lids and lovely stripy sides. I love collecting old paint charts and swatch cards. I adore all my picture cards from old lotto games, which I’ve organised by category (I feel a bit guilty about this as it would be more or less impossible, now, to sort them back into the original game sets).
I also like the tiny cameras. And the hairdryers, the ice creams and lollipops, the really tiny chairs. Everything, really.
Are there any objects you’ve yet to find or themed groupings you’d love to create, but haven’t yet?
Definitely! There always will be. I’d like to find more tiny plastic cacti, more mini hairdryers, more tiny radios, more striped things, more triangular things. Triangle-shaped things seem really rare. Purple things are rare too. There’s a particular set of (full-size) mugs with characters from Punch and Judy on them (by John Vernon Lord) that I’m very keen to find: I’ve two out of six so far. They are just exceptional objects.
For anyone reading this who might be inspired by your work (like me), and want to try it for themselves, what advice would you give to someone just starting out?
Tell yourself that you’re now in active collecting mode and keep your eyes open. I’ve found some great things just lying on the ground (a particular favourite is abandoned passport photos). Go into thrift stores, flea markets, boot sales. Hunt through boxes. Most good finds bear little relation to the other things they’re lumped together with, so don’t assume a sad-looking boxful won’t have something great in it too.
Actually my best tip is to dig deep, because if you’re looking for small things in particular, they always fall to the bottom of whatever container they’re in. Only spend money you’re comfortable spending, only buy things you like. Once you have a few things, then they can perhaps guide your choices as to the next things you look for – things the same colour, or made by the same company, or that you once had but have now lost. Connections between objects will give your collection coherence. But I’m sure these are very obvious things to say. Just do it for fun.
Is there anything else you’d like to share about your collecting story? (type as much as you’d like)
Just that it’s absolutely great that people seem to like seeing little collections. I’ve enjoyed every day of posting on Instagram and am very grateful for the interest I’ve had from so many people, as well as from one or two magazines and online publications. It’s continuing to open some interesting doors and I can’t wait to see where it takes me.
Where can we learn more about you and your work?
Well, the Instagram account is what it is, and any news or things of interest will always be on there (@foundandchosen). I do have a website with my other art on it, and also a blog with some interesting posts about various things on it, both rather neglected at the moment due to other calls on my time. I’m planning to start up something more regular on Substack soon as well, which will be pieces of personal writing.
Call Me! (or not!)
I’d love to hear from you! Drop your thoughts in the comments to share with the Landline community, or reply to this email to contact me. You can also find me on Instagram, or email me. I don’t have a dedicated phone line yet (just like in my youth), but maybe someday I’ll achieve Claudia status and get a Landline.
Thanks for reading!
This is a free post for subscribers of Landline. Consider subscribing to the paid plan to get my weekly email of recommendations and links, a podcast episode, and more! You can also help me spread the word by sharing it with a friend who would love it. Thank you for being a friend!
