CJ Peterson

CJ Peterson is the founder and Director of The Collectible Home Foundation. A lifelong bibliophile and student of American history, CJ has spent more than a decade building, preserving, and researching a personal collection of rare books, manuscripts, historical artifacts, and Western art — work that ultimately led to the conviction that some pieces are simply too important to remain behind one private door.

Collecting, for him, has never been about ownership alone. It has been about stewardship — the belief that objects carrying human stories deserve to survive long beyond the people who temporarily care for them. Over the years, that pursuit has led CJ through estate libraries, small-town auctions, museum archives, and private collections across the country in search of pieces that illuminate the American story and the people who shaped it.

Among the works and artifacts he has helped preserve are original 1830 first-edition Books of Mormon from the personal libraries of LDS Prophets Brigham Young, Wilford Woodruff, and George Albert Smith; an exceedingly rare first-edition 1833 Book of Commandments; King James I's personal copy of the King James Bible; an original 1640 first-collected edition of Shakespeare's Poems; paintings by artists such as Albert Bierstadt, Maynard Dixon, Minerva Teichert, and Carl Rungius; the only known one-of-a-kind 1898 Honus Wagner tintype; a recovered fragment from Amelia Earhart's Electra; Louis Armstrong's personal trumpet; Stephen Hawking's own marked copy of A Brief History of Time; and a complete set of first editions by Jane Austen. Many of these pieces now live — or are intended to ultimately live — in museums, universities, and institutional collections through the Foundation.

Outside the Foundation, CJ is a co-founder of Nutri Supplements and Nature's Fusions, a Utah-based family of natural-products companies started with his brothers in 2009. What began as a small operation serving family and friends has grown into a national supplements and essential-oils business built around rigorous in-house quality standards. He is also involved in several additional ventures and private investment projects focused on long-term value creation and preservation.

CJ studied business strategy at Brigham Young University, where he continues to mentor students navigating entrepreneurship, stewardship, and the challenge of building meaningful work. His interests remain deeply rooted in history, collecting, education, faith, and the belief that culture is strengthened when important objects are preserved thoughtfully and shared generously.

The Collectible Home Foundation was created to answer a question that private collecting alone cannot fully resolve: how should stewardship serve the public memory? Through the Foundation, CJ works to bridge the often-quiet gap between private collectors and the institutions best equipped to preserve and interpret these objects for future generations — museums that exhibit them, libraries that place them in the hands of researchers, and universities that build education around them.

At its core, the Foundation reflects the same values that shape CJ's life: a love of learning, a respect for history, a commitment to faith and family, and the belief that preserving human stories is one of the great responsibilities shared between generations.