As they were dining together one night, antiques collector John Arthur Hyman pulled out a cloth bag and challenged the curator of metals at Colonial Williamsburg to guess its contents and origin -- by feel.

"It was a quintessential Irish punch strainer [used to strain limes or lemons into a mixture with water, sugar, spices and spirits] and he was very lucky to have found it," said his dinnermate and friend, John D. Davis of Williamsburg.

"John was one of those people who always had collected something. He had an inquisitive sense and inquisitive sensibility about how objects related to other objects and what that told about them," Davis said. "He loved the social aspects of collecting, the people he got to know.

"Once he was involved with something, it consumed him. He would study why it was made, how it was used, how it differed region to region and its makers. He did a lot of planning to make sure collections would contain objects he wished and that there was a practical use."

Mr. Hyman, named the 1998 Collector of the Year by the Collectors Circle of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, died of respiratory failure Sunday in a Williamsburg hospital.

A memorial service will be held Saturday at noon in the chapel of the Sir Christopher Wren Building at the College of William and Mary.

The 86-year-old New York City native moved to Williamsburg in 1988 after retiring as a furniture manufacturing and design executive who had worked in North Carolina, Michigan and Kentucky.

One of the first things he did in Virginia was to connect with Colonial Williamsburg, where he served as a volunteer research assistant for two decades and as a lecturer.

He was known for a world-class collection of the early silver of Britain, Ireland and North America, which he began collecting about 25 years ago after becoming mesmerized by a silver collection in a small Scottish museum he chanced upon while hiking, Davis said.

"He had given sizable parts of the collection to Colonial Williamsburg, where it highly complemented our existing collection and made much more effective our ability to teach and give meaning to the American past," Davis said.

A World War II Army infantryman, Mr. Hyman assisted with the capture of Nazi Luftwaffe leader Hermann Goering in Bavaria during the closing days of the Third Reich.

Survivors include Mr. Hyman's wife of 20 years, Betty Crowe Leviner; two sons, John H. Hyman of Flemington, N.J., and Neil A. Hyman of Wilmington, N.C.; a stepbrother, David Alexander Sachs of Louisville, Ky.; and two grandsons.