about me + my collection
*This website isn’t about Vera Neumann. Not really, anyway.
It’s about something that made me happy at a time in my life when I really needed it, when I was in that liminal space between legally becoming an adult and actually feeling like one. I had just graduated from college and rented my first solo apartment in a city that was far enough from home to be different, with no concrete job prospects and a heap of uncertainty about what, who, and where I truly wanted to be.
I had enough time on my hands to kill with television and exploratory drives, and those two things are important in this story. One day while channel surfing, I happened to catch a spotlight episode on Vera Neumann, prolific artist and print goddess. Something about her artistic hand spoke to me, and I sat up and paid attention. Skip ahead to a week later, as I casually shopped a local thrift store, and I happened to spot a proverbial needle in a haystack – although in this case, it was a pineapple. And I knew it was hers.
That moment of recognition, followed swiftly by that internal yes that resonates inside a person when they find something they truly love, was the beginning of a multi-decade crusade to accumulate as many of Vera’s designs as possible – a mammoth task, as she designed over 20,000 prints in her lifetime. Believe it or not, I don’t tend to aggressively seek them out. I’m not typically an Ebay detective or Etsy stalker. I prefer to find them “in the wild,” so to speak, because nothing, and I mean nothing, sparks joy quite like that surprised moment of discovery, that “Oh! I recognize that style, please - please - please, YES!”
And you might not think it, but I have managed to acquire most of my seven-hundred-plus scarf collection (and don’t get me started on linens and housewares) by those moments of pure happenstance. That, plus a bestie who is a crackerjack Ebay detective and Etsy stalker, and who can also recognize the corner of a Vera sticking out of a thousand other things in a thrift or antique store. In this way, we have crept ever closer to my not-so-secret goal: total world domination. I want every print in every colorway, every strange and rare example, and every little Vera thing that makes my heart sing.
I may have started as a low-stakes drifter, and maybe now I’m enough of an expert collector to make the hunt a part of the game, but one thing hasn’t changed – that zing every time I see a Vera that can come home with me. I’ve had a lot of those over the years, and I treasure every one.
And now I need approximately 19,271 more.
*P.S. No, these aren’t for sale. This is simply an archive of my personal collection. If you’re a collector also, I hope you find this useful.