Last summer, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria presented Allan Collier's exhibition The Modern Eye: Craft and Design in Canada 19401980. I knew that visiting him at home was going to be a treat. With his wife, artist Mary Lynn Ogilvie, Collier lives in a modest place with cove ceilings and an understated 1950s flair. Immediately, we began an admiring tour of their collection of artistic pottery, sinuous furniture, and abstract art.

I recognized a hutch full of dishes, a hit of the first Vancouver Island Woodworkers Guild show in 1983. Collier built it, but admits he doesn't think of himself as a woodworker. He'd rather be known as "the first person in the city to use coloured lacquers" on his furniture.

The cabinet holds a set of "charcoal finish" china by Continental of Germany, designed by the legendary American Raymond Loewy (whose Studebaker and Electrolux will never die). Purchased at auction on Fort Street, it cost $100. Sharing the shelves were pieces by Dianne Searle of Victoria. "Beautifully made. Her ceramics were way out of context for the time," Collier said. Almost unknown, in the early 1980s, Searle was slip-casting sharply angular slab-built tea wares finished with superbly controlled glazes.

Collier grew up in Vancouver and enrolled in the architecture program at UBC, but left after a year. "I liked it," he said, "but it wasn't my scale." He likes smaller things, and dropped out to build houses on Saltspring Island with Tom Campbell (now a senior Victoria architect).

Coming to Victoria in 1973, Collier tried to make a go of it designing and building furniture. When he found a second-floor space in Fan Tan Alley in 1979, he moved to Chinatown. "I climbed up a ladder and crawled through a window, and walked into this Fan Tan gaming room that had been basically left the way it was after the last game. It had been empty for 10 or 15 years. Things were strewn about," Collier recalled. "It was 4,000 square feet, with 10 skylights which all leaked, but the rent was very reasonable." He stayed until July 1989.

Those were the glory years in Fan Tan Alley. Next door was painter Glenn Howarth, and across the alley, artist Luis Ituarte held court. Beneath Collier was woodworker David Pottier. "When the bailiff came in, I knew it was game over for him," Collier laughed. That space was taken over by Jim Stivens who specialized in heritage restoration woodworking: spindles and window frames and gingerbread detailing.

"It was a good situation," Collier said. "I've always enjoyed being downtown." But he admits that, after 15 or 20 years building furniture, he never made enough money to get by. So, in 1996, he enrolled at the British Columbia Institute of Technology and took training to become a high school "shop" teacher. After a further year at UBC to get a teaching certificate, he got a "real" job, which continues to keep him busy five days a week. Teaching has been good for him.

In addition to building things, he's been a regular at the Swap 'n' Shop at Western Speedway where every Sunday during the season, hundreds of sellers spread their wares. Collier's taste for mid-century modern has been far ahead of the curve, allowing him to build a pace-setting collection of furnishings and decorative arts.

In the late 1980s, Collier contacted Willard Holmes at the Vancouver Art Gallery and created an exhibition of British Columbia design. Soon, he was invited to bring his chairs to the Winnipeg Art Gallery to match them with abstract paintings of the period. He presented another show at Emily Carr College in Vancouver. One day, he lucked into a treasure trove of photographic material at a swap meet. Collier bought 100 prints and about 1,000 large-format negatives by Hubert Norbury, the leading architectural photographer of Victoria's modernist boom times. The airport, the university and the daring homes designed by John Di Castri were all captured in pristine black and white.

These photos became a solo show at the University of Victoria's Legacy Gallery and are currently a vital part of The Emergence of Architectural Modernism: Victoria Modern 3 (until Feb. 25) at The Legacy.

His biggest show, which emptied Collier's basement, was The Modern Eye, held last summer at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. Its lasting value resides in the 120-page catalogue that gives biographies of dozens of unsung Canadian designers. Though he was paid as curator, this was a labour of love. "If you see an idea," he said, "you have to do it. No one else is going to." Most visitors to the show were unaware that almost everything on display came not from the gallery's collection but from Collier's holdings.

Now, amazingly, Collier wants to donate his huge collection to some public institution where it will help Canadian design to be seen and appreciated. We talked of other places - Italy, Finland - where local design is a point of pride and cultural tourism is a booming industry. To those of us who work in the cultural sector, it is painfully obvious that Victoria - a tourist destination in a supremely walkable old town - is a location made to order.

As Collier talked, I relaxed (in his Strahan and Sturham easy chair made in Vancouver, circa 1954) and dreamed. If only the Art Gallery and the Maritime Museum were supported as the Royal B.C. Museum is, and a generous real estate magnate would endow Victoria with a Canadian design centre. The Collier collection awaits.

robertamos@telus.net