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.”

 

 

ALICE COLLECTORS: Marta @neverenoughalicebooks

 

  

 

  

Living in UK, with roots in Poland, Marta has built one of the most magical libraries dedicated to the universe of Lewis Carroll, with more than a thousand different editions of Alice. 📚📚📚

 Her Instagram and website are true portals: each book is photographed like a work of art, and many covers come alive through creative animations, as if Wonderland itself were unfolding from the pages. Her collection began during the pandemic as a creative solution for times of crisis, and it has blossomed like an enchanted garden 🌵🌵🌵. 

Today it brings together modern and contemporary illustrated books, international translations, limited editions, art books, and memorabilia. Her taste is eclectic: from Victorian Tenniel to surrealism and psychedelia, passing through gothic, kawaii, steampunk, feminist, manga, collage, and digital arts. 

Marta makes her research available to fellow collectors through a meticulous catalog on her website, where every item is carefully documented, forming a living archive. She also takes part in collector groups, sharing discoveries, trading editions, and collaborating on research, strengthening the global Carrollian community. 

She is also an artist: she has reimagined Carrollian characters to gift fellow collectors, creating a graphic and hypnotic style that combines intricate, repetitive geometric patterns with symbolic and narrative figures, uniting the abstract and the figurative, the decorative and the literary. Look at her works at @OrankiArt. 

Alongside Alice, she also collects treasures inspired by the Mexican Day of the Dead and editions of Gabriel García Márquez’s 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', expanding her Wonderland into new worlds of myth, memory, and magic. In her hands, books are not just objects to be stored, they are living wonders, each one a doorway to infinite realms, where curiosity never ends and Wonderland keeps on multiplying. 

✨ Congratulations, Marta, for your dedication not only to acquiring such wonders but also to generously sharing them with the world. ✨

 

 

ALICE COLLECTORS: Claire and Her Everyday Wonderland: @alicecollectoruk

 Every morning, Claire turns her collection into a ritual of alicedelic curation. With more than 200k followers across different platforms, she has transformed her English home into a wonderland where Disney pieces prevail but mingle with a wide range of books, Japanese treasures and European antiques. Everything glows with a cinematic light, even though captured on her i-phone. Her unboxings are acts of discovery. Each object makes its debut in carefully staged scenes, shelves become dreamlike displays and order itself turns into a form of play. 

 Claire is also a crafter. She hand-painted a White Rabbit dolls house with miniature furniture and created an Alice junk journal from the original texts and illustrations. Her spaces extend the magic of Wonderland: a collection room safe from her three cats, a summerhouse inspired by Mary Blair’s White Rabbit cottage with tea, succulents and an outdoor library, and a dining room prepared for whimsical teas with mismatched crockery. 

Even her biscuit box, painted with the White Rabbit and filled with handmade clay cookies, tells its own story. For Claire, collecting is not only about objects but about weaving passion, imagination and enchanted living into everyday life.