Five Beautiful Things
Living with Collections
I’m really excited about a new book that comes out this week called “Collected: Living With the Things You Love.” It was written by two former editors of Martha Stewart Living magazine; Fritz Karch was the Collecting editor for the magazine for many years and Rebecca Robertson was the Home editor. It is the perfect pairing for a book that aims to get our gathered and curated treasures out of storage and into the spaces we live in every day.
The book teaches readers the basic principles of the hunt while exploring the thoughtful and inventive ways people display their various collections, from the accessible and affordable to the aspirational and extreme. The featured collections range from dice to café au lait bowls to 19th-century-French sewing tools to sand from world travels—illustrating collections as expressions of personal style. It is divided into 16 chapters by collector type (The Modest, The Minimalist, The Exceptionalist, The Maximalist, etc.) and presents rooms filled with peculiar, elegant and awe-inspiring collections from around the world that suit the specific type of collector. Make sure to add this volume to your book collection! Below are five examples of collections that have been integrated into the home – beautifully.
1. Brent and Josh have a table in their bedroom at Beekman 1802 farm with a collection of silver and silver-plate candle sticks that they have collected over the years. “Most we paid very little for but when placed in a collection such as this the end result is very luxe,” says Brent.
2. This abundant collection of English transferware looks gorgeous in an antique hutch.
3. These antique hat forms are an unusual collection, but they look curiously stylish in this display case – without their corresponding hats.
4. My friend Ronnie Elgavish in Tel Aviv collects spoons of all sorts from around the world. He carefully photographs and catalogs them, documenting their histories and anecdotes. He has many of them on display in his home.
5. My mother has a drawer in her coffee table where she keeps the shoes her father wore as a baby, as well as some keys to rooms in the homes where she grew up.
What do you collect? Tell us in the comments section below.
