The Collectors
Showcasing items in your home may seem to some to be irredeemably old-fashioned. As a style of decor it seems too close to having a dowdy cabinet full of Royal Doulton china or a printer’s tray full of tiny tchotchkes on your wall. After all, in the 2000s, we were all encouraged to be minimalists, and leave the collectables to the blue-rinse brigade.
Pinterest in your Home
With social media, however, we’ve all become curators again. In creating online personae for ourselves, showing that you have exceptional taste is the order of the day. Plus, with the ever-growing prevalence of second-hand and craft markets, it’s become cool again to collect things and display them to show off your taste. To create, as it were, a physical Pinterest in your home.
Defining your Space
This trend has meant that there is a renewed interest in ways of showing off your collections. Chen Karlsson’s Favourite Things lamp, for example, has space to hold treasured objects so that they can take pride of place in a room. On the more functional side, systems like Endless Shelving from Massproductions help to define a space, acting as a room divider and storage system.
Challenge in Decor
There’s no doubt that the pendulum will eventually swing the other way and collections will again be relegated to the garage, but for now, displaying curated items is a key challenge in decor. The world is increasingly homogenised – we all have the same technology, the same clothes, the same furniture, the same everything – so the appeal of something that’s uniquely personal is perfectly understandable. Keeping the dust off everything, however, is a different story.
See for yourself:
Words: Chris Reid
Images: Massproductions & Chen Karlsson
