Displaying Collectibles

Objects, like people, have lives of their own and tales to tell. Things you acquired because they speak to you start to talk to each other when grouped into a display. Play around, have fun, and listen! Here are some stories on view in my home studio.

As a graphic designer, I love typefaces, so I’m naturally attracted to unusual examples. (What kind of a game would be called Flinch? I’m still afraid to open the box. But the type is gorgeous.) The Venus Unique pencils, with their beautiful labels, came from a cavernous stationer’s in Providence, Rhode Island, where unsold items from the 1940s lurked on dusty shelves. It was all very mysterious, a great place to escape on a rainy afternoon. At the rear of the cabinet is a set of perfectly made-to-scale toy Chinese weapons, dangerous-looking but adorably harmless at the same time. The collection’s rhythmic arrangement and the elegant shapes of the weapons are very pleasing to the eye.

Happy holidays from our Home to yours!

Top row, from left: Carole Nicksin, senior decorating editor; Carolyn Weber, senior building editor; Angela Riechers, art director, Susan Weiman, assistant to the editor-in-chief; Donna Sapolin, vp/editor-in-chief; Marlene Sezni, deputy art director; Julie Taraska, articles editor. Bottom row, from left: Laura Dye Lang, executive editor; Joel Bernstein, features editor; Nicole Sforza, deputy articles editor; Kitt Harris, photo editor; Rachel Stinson, contributing photo assistant; Christine Cameron, assistant editor.

The Big Picture

Artwork—the personal kind that makes your decor look inviting and complete—can be pricey and difficult to select . And family photos are usually too small to display as wall art. Fortunately, digital technology and some handy online resources are making it easier and more affordable than ever to supersize your cherished images, then frame and enjoy them as focal points in your rooms. The jump in scale has surprising impact, elevating the everyday into objets d'art.

To create the large-scale artwork shown left, I started with a snapshot of my mother taken when she was a teenager. I chose this particular image because it's very nicely composed, with a range of tones from crisp white to velvety black. The pattern in her dress mirrors the slightly out of focus background, and the old-fashioned deckle edge of the picture and the date stamp add vintage interest.

Color Your World

One of the most interesting things I learned my freshman year in art school (apart from the painful fact that I was not nearly as happening as I thought) is that even if you're well-versed in color theory, your innate color sense is often a better guide for determining what hues go together—or at least a more interesting one—than adhering to rules. Sure, cool and dark colors, such as navy blue, recede, and complementary hues, such as shades of red and green, are natural pairings. But nothing beats gut reaction (What colors make you happy?). By developing your own palettes, your decor will be much more personal and inviting. Inspiration can be found in unlikely places. Today I noticed a beautiful bright-skinned orange balanced atop a roll of duct tape next to a roll of kraft paper on my kitchen table (please, don't ask). Voilà—an instant orange, gray, and tan palette! But how to use those colors decoratively and in what amounts? To figure that out, I matched the objects to Benjamin Moore paint swatches —Fairway Oaks #1075, a rich tan; Gunmetal #1602, a silver-gray; and Fruit Punch #140, a lively orange—and then played around with them to decide how much of each color I wanted to see. I decided to use the soothing tan on the walls, and opted for gray upholstery, and, to cheer things up, patterned pillows and a throw in vivid orange. For a bolder approach, use the brightest color as your main hit—an orange couch would look smashing against dramatic gray walls and a neutral tan rug.

Home Grown

Click here to see a gallery of where the Home editors grew up.

Welcome to the inaugural edition of the Home blog—a multifaceted compendium of the latest and greatest tips, personalities, and products in the home design and retail arenas that goes far beyond what is covered in the pages of the magazine. In reading it, you’ll not only get a ton of fabulous solutions and info, but you’ll also get to know the Home editors a lot better. That’s because they’ll be the ones bringing you all this added insight—in their own unique voices. These folks are entertaining, totally in the know, and they love sharing their finds and ideas—in fact, they’re all but obsessed with the subject of home. I mean, why else would they walk around with pictures of their childhood homes in their wallets? (Well, okay, not all of ’em do, but they’re all willing to write about the same stuff they cover for the magazine, which is lots more work—and why on earth would they do that if they weren’t fixated?) I don’t carry a house photo on me, but I do have a shot of the place I moved into back in 1965 hanging on my bulletin board. I can trace my personal preoccupation with the topic of home to that period.