What Are You Keeping That Deserves a Better Story?
Updated: Oct 8
Every collection has a story to tell. When thoughtfully curated, a collection becomes more than a group of objects. It brings history, personality, and imagination into your home, turning treasured possessions into a visual story that's uniquely yours.
Done well, a display can make history and imagination come alive while telling a very personal story. Creating a beautiful and meaningful display for a vintage camera collection requires creative solutions tailored to the space, the collector, and the objects themselves.
To me, that’s one of the ultimate goals of your home. Because if you collect something and it spends its entire life in a box... are you and your home really living your best life?
I decided a long time ago that I would only collect things I could use. I was 13 when I started collecting vintage fashion, and I wore it. All of it. My collection has grown considerably since then, but I still follow that rule as much as possible. I love the idea that my clothes get out of the closet and have new adventures. But what about a collection you can’t wear? So how do you make an object come alive?
Use your imagination.
The video below shows one way I approached a collection of vintage cameras. Rather than simply lining them up in a cabinet and calling it a day, I created an accessible display interspersed with vintage photographs of the owners throughout their lives.
Suddenly, the cameras aren’t just objects. They’re part of a story.
Who used them? What did they see through them? Where did they travel? What moments did they capture? The photographs give the cameras context, and the cameras give the photographs another layer of meaning. And yes, the finished display gets plenty of oohs and aahs from visitors. (A respectable career achievement for old cameras.)
I create functional displays like this for clients all the time, and it’s some of my favorite work. My curation and design process begins with getting to know the client, their home, and the things they’ve chosen to keep. Then I figure out how to interpret those things in a way that feels exciting, unexpected, and completely personal to them.
Sometimes that means finding a better way to display a collection. Sometimes it means designing something that doesn’t exist yet.
That’s when things get really interesting.
Over the years, I’ve developed the ability to speak both curatorial language and fabrication language from working with museums and artisans. I can imagine the story an object could tell, then work with extraordinary craftspeople to figure out how we can actually build the thing. It’s a rather wonderful intersection of storytelling, design, history, engineering, and the occasional conversation that begins with, “I have a unique idea...”
Those are usually my favorite conversations!
Your collections shouldn’t just occupy space in your home. They can reveal something about who you are, where you’ve been, what fascinates you, and what you’ve chosen to carry forward.
So open the box.
Let the good stuff out.
The sky is the limit!
Comments