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Collecting adventures

21 February 2019 -

A book by Witsie Jeff Fisher (BSc 1958, BSc Hons 1958, MSc 1960, GDE 1965)

Words on Paper: Reflections of an Incurable Collector

by Jeff Fisher

Tracey McDonald Publishers, 2017

“This book is about a collection of handwritten original letters, antique documents, manuscripts, old share certificates, fire insurance policies, photographs and maps,” writes Jeff Fisher in the introduction to his book Words on Paper. It’s “a book of stories about letters, and letters that tell stories”, to be enjoyed by readers who “like true stories about real people, are intrigued by serendipity, curious about curiosities”.

Fisher, a physical chemist by training and a businessman through life’s twists and turns, has been a collector of these sorts of papers ever since he was a young man working in London in 1965. When he returned to South Africa in 1967 he began to haunt the Johannesburg dealers Thorold’s, Bakker and Collectors Treasury. By 1978, he was involved part-time in the diamond industry, while also working as an insurance consultant. He started collecting material related to the history of gold and diamonds – such as a letter from Cecil John Rhodes which reveals his ambitions. His collection of share certificates includes one for the South Sea Company (established 1711), of stock market bubble infamy.

The Internet has made it much easier to research the context of items, thus adding to the fascination of his pursuit. Eventually Fisher started cataloguing his collection so as to help his heirs one day, and the result is this book.

The fun part, he says, is the quest for authenticity of an item, such as a lock of Lord Nelson’s hair. Collecting also tends to result in serendipitous meetings and unexpected friendships. A reader of this book gets a sense of the excitement and joy not of owning a valuable document but of making connections and discoveries. The people behind the documents – such as the hairdresser turned highwayman, the polar explorer, Charles Dickens, Neil Armstrong, Thomas Edison, Olympic athletes and many more – lead the imagination down all sorts of paths, which sometimes cross. One of the letters is from Wits’ first Principal, Jan Hofmeyr, to Oliver Schreiner, dated 1939 – replying to a letter that’s in Wits’ Historical Papers Archives.

“My collection has taken me on adventures never dreamed of,” says Fisher, “finding such riches for the spirit and the mind as to make me want to share my strange wanderings in this book.”

The physical book, a 384-page hardcover edition, is as beautiful as you’d expect from a connoisseur of documents. The images are so clearly reproduced, with a 3D effect, it’s like having the originals in front of you. The design of the pages and the well edited, conversational style of the writing make the book easy to enjoy, either in bites or in a binge-read. In the age of email, it reminds us of the slow pleasures of stationery – as well as the wonderful, infinite world online.

Fisher registered at Wits in 1953, at the age of 16, and stayed in Dalrymple House. “After a rather dismal start … I enjoyed six glorious years of university life,” he writes. He was on the SRC, the All Sports Council and the Rag committee, and chaired the Athletics Club.