Japan Storm - Columbia College - Columbia University

In the mid-1960s, the captain of the allmale
cheerleaders had the option of being
the Lion mascot. I became captain in
fall 1964, and at the first football game
donned the fierce and lifelike — as contrasted
with the Disneyish “Roar-ee”
of current years — Lion suit. As in the movie
The Mask, a quiet English major was suddenly
transformed into a wholly different aggressive
leonine character with complete anonymity
and unlimited license. I never looked back,
and wore the suit for every football and basketball
game and alumni event until I graduated.
Among many other adventures in the Lion
suit, I met and spoke with President Kennedy
in the Harvard stands three weeks before his
life was cut short; pawed the girl who became
my wife, Sandra Lief Garrett (we’re both Leos
and were married in August) and began 45
years of collecting not wives but depictions of
the spirit of Columbia — the King of Beasts.
Our collection of lions from every culture, country and century
and in every style and medium, including jewelry and clothing,
exceeds (perhaps by quite a bit) 4,000 items. Through the decades,
in the course of our extensive travels around the world and virtual
travels on the Internet, we have amassed leonine representations
including a 14th-century (and a dozen other) inkwells; a 19-century
carousel figure; an elaborately carved Victorian dining room
set; six different meerschaum pipes; 100 or so lion boxes; a working
porcelain lion toilet; 16 door knockers; 22 pairs of cufflinks; 10
sets of earrings; 30 stickpins and tie tacks; 50 broaches, pins and
pendants; 90 ties; seven belt buckles; six antique pocket watches;
a dozen silk scarves; countless knobs, pulls, handles and hooks;
14 mugs and steins; hundreds of 18th- and 19th-century images
a L u m n i C o R n e R
Hoard, Lion, Hoard
Obsessively collecting the King of Beasts
B y mIchael garrett ’66, ’69l, ’70 BusIness
The collector at home in Park Slope, Brooklyn,
with a newel post.
WINTER 2011–12
96
COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
on paper; four lamps; 20 bronzes; a sterling
dinner service for 12; 40 Christmas ornaments;
innumerable stuffed and other toys; an 18thcentury
pub sign; nine medallions; 17 military
medals; and large prides of lions in base and
precious metals, glass and crystal, all kinds of
wood, simple and semi-precious stone, resin,
plastic, cloth, paper and soap. The specific listing
of objects within and beyond these categories
is a work in progress that currently runs to
two volumes.
There are myriad stories of the provenance
and purchase of many of our lions. The carousel
figure and dining room set came from
scouring the merchandise listings in The New
York Times. We found the silver service in part
on eBay and in part in a most unlikely catalog.
In Venice, we discovered a glass sculpture of
the Lion of Venice undusted for 25 years in a
dark corner of Salviati. In London, at Gray’s
Antique Stalls, a friend outbid a duke for an
early 19th-century rampant lion silver inkwell. A dealer bought
my favorite pocket watch for me in Paris moments before an auction
likely would have increased its price tenfold. In that vein,
much of the jewelry, watches and art was carefully conjured
away from folks who did not understand the value of what they
had — a process that has become much rarer in its application
since the universality of the Internet and other enemies of ignorance
such as Antiques Roadshow. When I paid a sculptor in Jamaica
with a large denomination bill, he tried to give me change
in hash ish. Leaving Egypt, we were stopped and surrounded by
armed soldiers when a large marble head buried in our suitcase
appeared on the security monitor to be a large bomb. Through
(Continued on page 95)
From left, a working porcelain toilet, or “Still Life with Water Feature”; the collector’s kitchen, or “Lions on and over the Range”; and a special collection
of small match safes, boxes, pipes and more.
PHOTOS: MICHAEL GARRETT ’66, ’69L, ’70 BUSINESS