AN "Aladdin's cave" of material from the studio of the late Scottish sculptor Sir Eduardo Paolozzi has been given to the Tate in one of the biggest donations made to the gallery.

Comprising hundreds of boxes, the eclectic contents include sketches, personal diaries, a card left in a telephone kiosk by a prostitute and Lego bricks.

Toby Treves, a trustee of the Eduardo Paolozzi Foundation, described the artist as "a magpie". He said: "To say he was a hoarder would be wrong. It was just that he saw possibilities in so many things around him in terms of how they might feed into something that he was doing."

The gallery estimates it will take years to catalogue the items collected by Leith-born Paolozzi who died in 2005. Having had a sift through some of the boxes, Tate archivist Adrian Glew said he was already "very excited".