A Cornucopia of Collections: Millais Gallery, until February 24

If you think it's only anorak-wearing, train-spotting types or wealthy celebrities who collect things, then a new exhibition at the Millais gallery might surprise you.

Nine lecturers from Southampton Institute are exhibiting their own personal collections as an exercise in revealing something of the nature of collecting - a facet of the Fine Arts Valuation course on which they all teach.

Although fine art and antiques form some of the displays, it's largely a diverse collection of objects that hold great personal value and appeal for the collectors, rather than a monetary one.

For example, Hilary Ghey's collection consists of objects dug up from her garden. Lecturer Hilary found things like flints, fossils, pottery fragments - some of which date back to the stone-age - but others, like toys, which are much more recent.

One eye-catching collection is the Cube teapots display belonging to Anne Anderson. It features about 40 teapots made between 1917 and the 1930s.

"The design caught my attention a few years ago - my curiousity was aroused by the rather odd style and I wanted to find out why they were that shape," says Anne.

Anne's research led to her publishing a book about the teapots. She discovered that designer Robert Crawford-Johnson made them that shape so they were easier to store on ships and that the Cunard liners in Southampton stocked them for a number of years from 1930.

Victorian pottery, fabrics from the 1950s, books, manuscripts and Danish glass are some of the other collections that feature in this eclectic exhibition which has been curated by Dr Tim Wilks, senior lecturer in the Faculty of Media, Arts and Society at the Institute.

"What has emerged during the formation of this exhibition is not the market value of these objects, but the significance they hold for their owners," he says.

"They act as reminders of the course of our lives, as markers of our identities, as statements of our cultural politics, or as stimuli for memories, moods and emotions."

* A Cornucopia of Collections is at the Millais Gallery, East Park Terrace, Southampton until February 24.

For more information call 023 8022 2259