From The urban villa - Stamford CT 3^rd February  2012

Collections and Design

A friend recently posted on Facebook the following picture of aquanauts rather large depression- ware glass collection, and much comment was made of the sheer size of the collection .Also of  the lack of display due to the number pieces crammed into several curio cabinets. The only seemingly order was to mass the pieces together by color. What a shame that what is probably a wonderful collection cannot be fully appreciated due to sensory overload. How often in my carrier as a designer have I encountered clients who desire help to manage a collection or to edit the inheritance of a loved one that may not be to their own taste.

Here is the photo I was speaking of:

A lovely collection to be sure, BUT as you can see it is almost impossible to concentrate on a single piece as there are so many competing pieces. Also the only color in the room is from the glassware itself. I would edit out at least half of the pieces and a third of the shelves. A collection needs breathing room, and the addition of negative space. It is also necessary to mix pieces for visual interest. For example I use this Welsh Dresser that I made for my own kitchen at the country house. Notice that there is still space around the pieces of Willow-ware and that I have mixed in other items other than making this a solid mass of Blue & White.

Sometimes it takes adding rather subtracting. In this case , the bookcase sat a little forlornly by itself on the window wall of rob’s condo- add a pair of open back antique chairs , and the area works much better.

Often it just takes looking around the other rooms of a client’s house to pull a project together. In this case I was helping a dear friend in NYC pull together a brownstone full of inherited pieces. Rather than let pieces reside where his mother had always placed them in this parlor, the first thing I did was to place these wing chairs in front of the wonderful tall windows. However this end of the room was still not working till I found the charming secretary desk being used in the dressing room. Once we placed the desk between the windows, the whole room fell together!

 

Sometimes it is just a small thing, like the dining room pictured here – after much discussion – the table rotated giving much more room.

Before

After

Or even thinking outside of the box- for the living room at the country house I decided that due to the small size of the room that I did not need to add a sofa to the 2 wing-back chairs already in the room. Instead I picked up a pair of shield-back chairs inexpensively at a thrift store and added a family heirloom marble-topped table. The open splat backs keep the open feel that I wanted and do not block my view of the backyard.

One last thought I will leave you with, among the comments made on the first picture at the top of this post, where that the man posting must be straight as opposed to be a gay male. I’m not sure if being gay gives you a better sense of style or not, but my partner and I have found that most of the gay households that we have visited do tend to have more style than their straight counterparts. Just a thought.

Hugs

David