susan stewart, on the miniature: an ideal item for collections because it’s “sized for individual consumption but also its surplus of detail connotes infinity and distance.”

there’s an idea that the tiny worlds created by tiny things are a method of control, and this rings true with ken thomson who was very interested in a world that could be ordered, understood, controlled, and followed an understandable pattern. he collected many miniatures, from snuff bottles to prayer beads to ship’s models. miniatures ostensibly reproduce our lives in their scale, but it’s not an entirely faithful copy, rather than alternative.

snuff bottles are described by western appraisers as ‘the chinese art world in miniature,’ though it’s not entirely apparent to me that non-western sources view it that way. this also feels somewhat reductive toward chinese art, the idea that an entire history of a culture’s art can shrink and expand yet one thing remains equivalent another and it’s all contained so neatly.