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Displaying Your Collections

By Kit Davey

An artful display of your collections can add charm and personality to your home.  Why not rummage through your closets and drawers and haul out your hidden treasures? 

Once you've scrounged up your fire extinguishers, hats, rusted farm tools or whatever, follow these simple guidelines to get the most impact: 

Keep your collection together.  It won't look like a collection if you place one thimble on an end table, one on a bookshelf and another on the piano.  Carve out an area in which the collection can be displayed as a whole.  If your collection is vast, you might want to divide it into logical sections and place in several rooms or cabinets. 

Display it in a dedicated area.  Create a mini-museum by turning over part or all of a room, or a piece of furniture to your collection, for example: 

• For small collections, you might simply use the shelf over your kitchen sink, the top of your dresser, one shelf in a bookcase, a small tray, or a small wall-mounted shelf unit.  Some possibilities: a row of teacups nestled between leather bound books on a bookshelf, silver thimbles on a lace-covered tray; family photos, all in ornate gold frames on top of the sofa table; your childhood dolls or stuffed animals sitting in a rocking chair; or several quilts hanging from a ladder leaned against the wall.  Hammer nails around a window frame and hang your antique key collection; drape your hand-woven sashes over the door of an armoire or hang a few brightly colored plates over your kitchen door.
  
  
• Medium-sized collections may need to occupy an entire bookcase, a wall, or an etagere.  An array of straw hats, wall-clocks, beaded purses, movie posters, masks or crosses can spice up a hallway, or a blank wall in any room.  Why not use your garden fence to show off your farm tools, ceramic tiles or birdhouses?  Rows of car models, pottery, large rocks or sculpture pieces can make an impressive display in a lighted etagere or on bookshelves. 

Creatively Group Your Treasures.  A collection which is uniform in size and shape, such as teacups, thimbles, nutcrackers or train cars, may look best lined up in evenly spaced rows on shelves.

• If your treasures are of varying heights, and you want to display them in rows, try a symmetrical arrangement:  think of the airspace above the display surface as a triangle, with center of the space as the apex of the triangle.  Place the tallest object in the center and line up the rest to either side in diminishing heights.
  
  
• Another symmetrical arrangement can be achieved by creating an "M"-shaped display.  Place the tallest pieces on either end of the space and the smallest in the center.  Fill in the intervening space with your medium-sized pieces. 

If you don't want your trinkets in rows, but rather clustered on surfaces such as end tables, dressers or vanity-tops:

• Try creating a cascading effect.  Place the tallest item in back and then arrange the medium-sized pieces in middle of the cluster, with the smallest sitting in the front of the grouping.  Odd numbers of items tend to group better than even-numbered clusters. 
  
  
• If you have space for several groupings on a shelf or the top of a bureau leave plenty of air between arrangements.
  
  
• Avoid mixing your collections.  Your Star Trek memorabilia may not blend well with your Winnie the Pooh stuff.