These things begin innocently enough, with a Fire-King jadeite batter bowl, or maybe a couple of rye-straw baskets. But sometimes the condition worsens, and other bowls and baskets start following you home. You diversify into furniture and paintings - and pumpkin-head Halloween figures, embroidery stitched long ago by Pennsylvania schoolgirls named Mary and Ruth, a row of 19th-century French milliners' forms with their daintily painted red-lipped faces staring vacantly into space.