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What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you?
The piece of art that changed my life entered my home in 1970, after I had attended a tag sale while refurbishing an old Baltimore townhouse. It was a small, multicolored, Chinese cloisonné toothpick holder purchased for $5. That started a lifetime of collecting, and it was hard to stuff the genie back in the bottle.
About six years later, a friend called, urging me to take the next train to NY to see some unusually fine cloisonné objects he had discovered in a store on Madison Avenue. After finding four remarkable items there, each costing more than 10 times what I had previously spent, I bought the four on the spot. To pay for them, I auctioned what remained of my collection--minus, of course, the toothpick holder. That day was to totally transform my collecting habits. Over the next 35 years, I began to collect slowly, carefully, little-by-little--a process that would take me deeper into the arts of Japan and then into the arts of all of Asia. I have collected cloisonné, not as a curiosity or to build a historic overview, but simply because the medium offered some of the most beautiful objects I had ever seen. And during the early years of acquiring them, they were also very affordable. Being able to live with beauty is not a remote goal but one largely accessible to many--with time, focus and work.
Stephen Fisher’s collection of Japanese cloisonné enamels (a vase from the collection is pictured above) is on view at the Walters Art Museum until June 13.
