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I blog so often about cabinets of curiosity, it seems only fair to share my own...
Our petite cabinet of curiosities resides in the living room. The cabinet itself was a Craig's List find, purchased for $50 in Seattle, from a very kind woman helping her elderly friend downsize. I was so in love with the uncommon greige finish and elegant shape, I made Adam take an afternoon off to help me load it into a borrowed car, back down a perilous driveway, and inch it up our steep and narrow staircase. When we finally got it inside, I found a booklet full of neatly penned notes comparing bottles of scotch tucked into a drawer. Imagining that this might have been a little old lady's liquor cabinet still makes me giggle!
We've filled it with treasures, valuable for otherwise. Beautiful art books and vintage ephemera mingle with found objects and natural oddities. Adam's collection of laboratory glassware stands next to 20 years worth of my beach-combing souvenirs. My alligator head grins from the second shelf, with a mouthful of foreign coins. The cabinet is home to items inherently beautiful and sentimental, like my Great-Grandmother's china teacup (or a vial of kitten teeth!)
I papered the back of the cabinet with pages from a tattered old Japanese & English dictionary: yet another layer of meaning for the curious observer.
How do you display your most prized belongings and mementos?
4 Have Spoken.:
This is absolutely beautiful - what a brilliant idea for displaying things other than the usual on the coffee table or under the bed. :) And yay for Mark Helprin!
I love this. I have some old glass-front built in cabinets that house my favorite things. They were full of Christmas treasures until this weekend, and now have winter and vintage love things for Valentines, including love letters exchanged by my grandparents. I have an old wooden glass-front cabinet that I use as my liquor cabinet and bar but the back is just dark wood and I love the idea of lining it with something wonderful like you did. Did you glue them in, or decoupage or something else?
Wonder... Thank you! Swan Lake still makes me weep, it's so perfectly tragic!
Karen... Love letters, how wonderful! My dictionary page backing was as simply and impermanently done as possible, since I know I'm fickle about these things. I just used little rolls of tape!
Beautiful. I love this!
I usually rotate and sprinkle a few bits here and there. I like them to stand out individually. But I also like to keep things fresh, so I try to move them around and use them differently season to season.
But the effect of this layered look is quite magnificent!!
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