ALICE COLLECTORS: Caterina in Wonderland

 @cateaparty 

“Alice is part of me,” she says. “I feel a lot like her. It contains many things that I love.” 

Caterina turns her collection into a poetic ritual. In her photos, dolls, books and scenes of tea and forest blend daily gestures with dreamlike reverie. An Italian interior designer, she began collecting in 2003 and now shares her Wonderland through more than 150 posts to more than 2000 followers on Instagram. 

A careful cosplayer, she often dresses as Alice and performs within her own photos, creating her personal Wonderland where fiction and life intertwine. Her collection is eclectic, mixing books, dolls, costumes, makeup, miniatures and themed objects, with a special affection for Disney interpretations. 

Her feed is a cabinet of imagination where books, teacups, mirrors and memorabilia appear like still-life scenes of wonder. Each image is composed with the precision of a set designer and the sensibility of a storyteller, evoking the spirit of the Mad Tea Party and the intimacy of secret diaries. She collects modern and vintage editions, organizing her shelves by color, turning them into chromatic landscapes of fantasy.

 For Caterina, collecting Alice is also about belonging to a community of Mad Hatters and kindred spirits, a place where riddles, trades and discoveries are constantly shared. “I hope to bring a little magic to the people who follow me ✨,” she writes, and her photographs do exactly that, transforming collecting into a tender form of self-portrait and a celebration of curiosity, beauty and the art of keeping enchantment alive. 

The last image, a dreamy illustration that she uses as her Instagram avatar: perfectly condenses her world of wonder: intimate, playful and luminously Alicean.

 

 

ALICE COLLECTORS: Jules and the Art of Becoming Who You Are

 @ fortheloveofalice_ 

 

Among the new generation of Carrollian collectors, Jules shines with rare harmony between passion and creation. Her collection began in 2009, inspired by the Disney film, and soon expanded into a lifelong devotion to all things Alice. What started as a childhood fascination became an artistic vocation, and she is now illustrating her own Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, reimagined through the dreamlike landscapes of Los Angeles, where she lives. 

Her shelves combine vintage and modern editions, catalogued with care and often arranged by color, turning her library into a chromatic landscape of wonder. Among her treasures is a rare edition illustrated by A. E. Jackson, alongside other vintage gems such as the elusive edition by John R. Neill, which links her love for Alice to her passion for Oz. 

As an artist, Jules values editions that reveal both beauty and intention: unique covers not repeated inside, illustrations that flow through the story, and characters whose style expresses imagination and individuality. 

For Jules, Alice became a language of self-discovery. As a trans woman, dressing as Alice was part of her journey toward authenticity, a step toward inhabiting her own truth. Her collection reflects that unfolding, a luminous archive where identity and imagination continue to grow together. Among the photos of her collection, one image stands apart: the puppy from Wonderland, the only illustration by Jules herself.

 

 

ALICE COLLECTORS: Gavin O’Keefe

@ groonster

 

 

 

 Gavin L. O’Keefe embodies a dual role in the world of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: he is both a passionate collector and one of the most distinctive illustrators of Carroll’s classic. As a collector, O’Keefe began his journey in 1986, long before the internet shaped today’s collecting networks. His tastes gravitate toward gothic, surreal and disturbing editions, inspired early on by illustrators such as Mervyn Peake, John Tenniel, and Ralph Steadman. 

His collection spans modern and artistic editions, translations, rare books, and works by contemporary artists. Among his most treasured items is the Inky Parrot Press edition of Alice illustrated by Willy Pogany, while his dream acquisition remains Trevor Brown’s Alice. For him, Alice symbolizes resilience and the courage to face adversity, a figure of personal and universal growth. As an illustrator, O’Keefe’s engagement with Wonderland has unfolded in three distinct phases:

 • The GO Alice (Carroll Foundation, 1990), with intricate pen-and-ink drawings infused with Celtic, surreal, and historical intertexts, creating a Wonderland of dark humor and mystery. 

 • The Alice Books (Ramble House, 2010), combining new illustrations for both Wonderland and Looking-Glass, with more open compositions and a streamlined, three-dimensional aesthetic. 

• A forthcoming full-color edition, exploring emotional expressiveness and visual richness, weaving together references from Cold War science and politics to sixteenth- and nineteenth-century imagery. 

For O’Keefe, Alice’s world transcends anachronism, existing across multiple dimensions of time. 

 

 

ALICE COLLECTORS: Linzi, the Chromatic Librarian of Wonderland

 @myaliceinwonderlandbooks 

 

Among all the Wonderland wanderers, Linzi shines for the quiet harmony of her chromatic shelves. Her collection, gathered since 2015 when she was studying Children’s Literature at university, turns the simple act of arranging books into a rainbow ritual where color replaces chronology and emotion outweighs rarity. 

For Linzi, collecting is not a financial investment but an act of resonance. Each spine and shade mirrors a fragment of her own becoming. “Alice is me but not me,” she says, “I identify with her on many levels.” She admits she gets “a little bit bored of Tenniel as I prefer other interpretations,” and her library reflects that curiosity. It now holds over 700 copies of Alice from around the world, each one revealing new ways of seeing and being Alice, with different faces, voices, and interpretations that celebrate diversity and transformation.

 With more than a hundred posts devoted to Alice, her profile unfolds as a luminous archive where colorful spines create chromatic textures within the settings of her photographs, forming a visual game that connects one post to another like a great puzzle. The materiality of covers and shelves becomes central; they are the nests where each collection dreams, breathes, and multiplies its wonder.

 

 

 

ALICE COLLECTORS: Nurdamla

@okitabinadineydi 

 

 

 Based in Türkiye, Nurdamla is a medical doctor who began her Alice journey in 2016. Since then, she has built a lively digital presence on Instagram, where she shares her growing collection with nearly three thousand followers. Her posts reveal both a sense of aesthetic care and a personal connection to Wonderland, turning books and objects into moments of storytelling. Her collection gathers modern and artistic editions, international translations, illustrated works, and decorative memorabilia. 

She is especially drawn to the diversity of illustration styles, from Tenniel’s Victorian imagery to surrealist, gothic, and kawaii visions, showing her openness to both historical continuity and imaginative reinvention. Among her most cherished treasures is Robert Sabuda’s intricate pop-up edition, while her dream remains to find rare Russian or Chinese adaptations. For Nurdamla, Alice has always been meaningful because she is a girl on an adventure without a prince, a heroine who embodies independence and imagination. 

Now, her collection also carries an intergenerational value: she hopes her daughter will one day inherit not only the books but also the love for the story itself. In this way, her shelves are more than objects of admiration; they are a legacy of wonder and adventure shared across generations. In the typology of collectors, Nurdamla can be seen more as an Affective Collector, someone guided not only by rarity or historical prestige but by the emotional resonance of each item, weaving Alice into the fabric of memory, family, and community. Yet her practice is not limited to this category; it also reflects an eye for artistic experimentation and alicedelic curiosity, qualities that keep her collection in constant metamorphosis.

 Pictures 1-5: home | Pictures 6-10: 

AI animation inspired by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: A Pop-up Adaptation (Hardcover, Little Simon, 2003), written by Lewis Carroll and illustrated by Robert Sabuda. All rights remain with the original author and illustrator. This video is a non-profit homage.

 

 

 

ALICE COLLECTORS: Wellcome Danuta

@danutarf 

Among the many who follow the White Rabbit, Danuta Radomska-Filipek from Poland stands out as a passionate guardian of Wonderland. 

Her journey began in 1958 when she received her very first Alice book as a young girl. Over the decades her fascination grew into a remarkable collection that includes rare Polish editions, international translations exchanged with fellow enthusiasts, and beautifully illustrated volumes that turn her shelves into a paper art gallery. 

She also treasures unique objects such as a porcelain Alice figurine, a chess set, and keepsakes from Alice’s Shop in Oxford. Danuta is not only a collector but also a researcher and writer. She has produced academic and independent works on Alice and shares her reflections on her website Lawendowy Kapelusz, where she documents her collection and explores the countless ways Carroll’s creation continues to inspire literature, illustration, and cultural imagination. 

Her sources range from scholarly works to museum and exhibition catalogs, revealing her dedication to both preserving and interpreting the Wonderland legacy. For Danuta, Alice is more than a character on the page. She is a lifelong companion who continues to surprise, inspire, and connect her with kindred spirits around the world. As Danuta herself says, “I did not choose Alice, Alice chose me, and she continues to surprise me every single day.”