This room is pretty great. except for those things hanging down from the ceiling which are reminding me a little too much of….ahem….rhymes with mesticles…(please this is a family blog, for feck sake).  

4. rule .  A collection must contain contrast no matter what the collection is.  The contrast could be size – if you collect everything the same size its very un-dynamic, and won’t look very collected, will look more like you bought them all at once at the same place – which is an anti-collection.  Collect different sizes, shapes and colors (perhaps stick within a palette), as all of these three collections have.  And base the display around the biggest one (a hero, perhaps), and style around it.

5.  don’t collect everything.  it becomes more of hoarding (not in the A&E sense, but in the ‘this person has a house full of shit that you can’t move around and he/she obsesses over’ kind of way).  There gets to be a point where you can stop the collection.   I once shot at Martha’s house in the Hamptons (yes, we are on first name basis, she calls me Ems most of the time, or Emmy, or ‘my dearest’, or just ‘beautiful’) and she collected all of this green pottery ( i don’t remember what its called, if anybody knows, tell me), it’s light green, vintage (30’s-50’s?) simple and super pretty. But she had sooooo much of it, all of her dinnerware, everywhere in her living room, dining room, bathroom and all the pots in her landscaped garden were of the same brand/color too.  I remember an insider telling me that it really was more like hoarding than collecting – she pretty much had every piece that existed.  And yes, it had big impact, but it was a one trick pony and you stopped noticing after a while – you lost interest.  As a side note she used that color green as her exact color palette for the whole house.  All the walls were a shade of it, her upholstery worked perfectly with it, all the plants indoor and outdoor were the perfect pantone chip color green to work with the pots, and get this:  she had her cruiser bike custom painted the exact same color.  We get it Marth.  you like green.

Anyway, to wrap it up:  collect only pretty, awesome things that you want to make a statement, display them together, don’t be a snob – collect anything that you find beautiful and organic, make sure there is contrast within the display and know when to stop.

not sure why  I think i’m the expert.  i’m definitely not.   Perhaps as a former collector of way too much i feel self-rightious about chastising others.  that’s kinda crappy of me, eh?
sorry.