Bruce Chatwin’s final work, written shortly before his death while he was suffering from an illness, tells the story of Kaspar Utz, a Czech collector of Meissen porcelain figurines. He is able to keep his collection, unscathed, through the Nazi occupation and the Communist regime. Kaspar’s perverse ties to his delicate statues trap him in the regime, because he does not want to with the collection. Chatwin meets him in Prague, where he was writing an article on Emperor Rudolph. He masterfully traces the profile, investigating the melancholy mood of the collector. Collecting manifests an accumulation of varied, improbable objects, often degenerating into crazed tendencies. Figurines are the most frequently collected, from tin soldiers to cloth dolls, and insects and animals in porcelain, ceramics, glass and even paper. We have decided not to focus on collectors, but on the artists and designers that create figurines using varied materials to highlight the modernity of these artistic subjects.