Coming from a marriage of two compulsive collectors, it is really hard not to let the objects accumulate into chaos and clutter.  We are dreadful at always coming home with bizarre treasures, and love taxidermy, old medical paraphernalia, books and actually anything odd that grabs our fancy.  For Christmas I received a vintage medical model of a hair follicle and a also Biologist’s fish’s brain model – bless him!  However, with so much stuff and growing collections I often have to reorganise the items into some form of controlled display.

I am inspired by this house featured in Apartment Therapy where the owners have as much ‘stuff’ as we do, and have managed to group it into some semblance of controlled display.

I love their version of a kitchen unit – a dream for hoarders like me.  Cannot see myself chopping onions anywhere on it, but it is a small price to pay for such a beautiful piece of furniture.

There are lots of ways to display items and they can look great en masse, this is a collection of antique textile fibres I picked up at a flea market and grouped together in a shelved box frame:

I always remember being knocked out by this photo of a collection of baskets in a hotel.  Amazing.

I have a large glazed cupboard in the hallway where I store bits and pieces like magazines, ribbons and so on (neatly hidden away in boxes).  I wanted it to be visually more exciting so backed the cupboard in fabric, then added in collections of shoe lasts, fossils and some very old books:

 I am working my way through the various collections and trying to space them out around the house so they can be seen clearly and preferably not gather dust.  It is a long winded task, this one below is one of my husband’s ‘cabinet of treasures’… I don’t even know where to start on this one but it needs an edit.  He has also swiped some of my treasured insect taxidermy into it I note…