Clutter Vs Collectibles

By Author: Lloyd Juhasz
Total Articles: 1
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I was at a jumble / indoor car boot sale over the weekend and I was astounded by the amount of pottery for sale. Most of it was recognisable as Aynsley, Belleek, Lladro etc. These were all old collections granted but collections they were never the less. They were being sold by women wishing to 'declutter' and make a few bob at the same time as these vases, plates, ornaments are still considered valuable and get pride of place on the mantel piece or display cabinet. The Victorians inspired us to fill every conceivable free space in the home with ornamentation and collections. As the Bourgeois middle classes were really becoming stronger during this time it was an easy way to assess ones wealth - the more ornamentation and collections you had on display the wealthier you were deemed to be! A bare room was clearly not a sign of good taste and less was certainly not more!

As we are now more confident in our own right as an individual we find it easier to make the decision of how to decorate our homes. If you are a hoarder like my parents and have paraphernalia from every corner of the globe that you want to see as a reminder ...
... of experiences and holidays then there are some lovely display cabinets and shelving units available on which to display your wares (although from time to time even they clear out those awful, mass produced touristic ornaments that we bought home from school tours etc!). It is obviously an advantage to have a large room in which to display your collections as a small room can become cluttered quite easily no matter how interesting the piece on display and we land up feeling claustrophobic and ill at ease.

The other problem is that our homes are not showrooms so don't be fooled by the beauty of a display in a shop window as the item you buy will inevitably look better on display than on your shelf. You walk past the gorgeous small boutique shop windows that are tantalizingly filled with objects de art that you just have to have and after 'umming' and 'aahing' you purchase a divine piece of pottery that will join the rest of the dust collectors on a window sill. I may be cynical but if I am then why are car boot sales and charity shops filled with this stuff?

I do think that that there are some very successful designs where ornamentation is nonexistent or kept to the minimum of one tasteful sculpture. These people might not require reminders of their holidays on every surface and are satisfied with a more minimalist design. So what is the correct approach? What is deemed as clutter and what is deemed as a tasteful set of collectibles? One person's kitsch is another person's treasure. So it all boils down to a matter of taste and what you like or more importantly in my mind - what you are willing to dust!

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