By nature, almost all of us tend to accumulate one thing or another. Maybe haphazardly, or maybe passionately, but usually because whatever it is we`re amassing has us mesmerized.
At some point, these accumulations become a collection. And as Randy Bourne, the founder and president of a catalogue company called Exposures, discovered, quite a few of us are smitten with something.
”Everyone seems to be collecting right now,” Bourne says. He came to this conclusion less than a year after he started his business, which was originally devoted to photo memorabilia, in 1987.
”I used an antique vitrine as a photo prop in one of my first catalogs, and all my customers wanted to buy it. So I found someone to make something similar for us to sell,” he says.
Bourne learned that ”there are all sorts of offbeat items to display”-
something that Raymond Arenson, vice president of corporate design for Crate & Barrel, has made a career accomplishing.
Arenson is responsible for the interiors of all of Crate & Barrel`s stores. In his 18 years with the company, he has had to solve every kind of design and display problem imaginable-which often means ”making disparate items look good together,” as he describes it.
Although most collectors face the same task, few have to tackle it on a regular basis. But Arenson insists ”it`s easy to display collections” and has developed some simple rules of thumb to aid him in his endeavors.
”First you have to organize what you have,” Arenson explains, ”and this is the hardest part since there are so many aspects to address. You have to consider where your collection should be and how you want to break it down.”
If it`s all over the house, it can look cluttered, so Arenson recommends relegating it to certain spots. ”That way it becomes a single entity instead of a lot of little things, and it takes on much more strength.”
”It`s also a matter of presentation,” he continues. ”If I have 50 kinds of stemware, I place them in similar fixtures to unify them. The same kind of concept works for almost anything. Take plates. Put them in identical racks and the different patterns, colors, sizes and shapes relate to each other.”
But there are many ways to be creative, especially when ”sorting one`s stuff,” Arenson says. Classify items into contrasting or complementary categories. Or put together items by more offbeat guidelines, such as substance, age, texture or color.
Bourne, who collects sea glass and old cameras, advocates the same kind of approach. He believes ”it`s exciting to group collectibles eclectically.” And today his catalogue features a large assortment of items devoted to such displays-just the sort of pieces that are always hard to find when you need them.
