How to decorate with antiques, Part 3: The best ways to live with your antiques
As with any worthwhile endeavor, completing a bit of homework prepares you for the task at hand. In this case, the task is to display your growing collection of vintage furniture, art, and/or accessories in your home. Defining your personal relationship with antiques and clearly understanding the type of antiques you are drawn to are the homework points that provide the springboard for displaying your collection. Here are the two best ways to live with your antiques:
1. Make them part of everyday life. This is my favorite motto and one that slips pieces from other time periods into the daily fabric of our lives. Antique chairs, sofas, dressers, cupboards, cupboards, tables, rugs…etc. all make wonderful additions to today’s home. The inclusion of a beautiful piece of distressed wood adds a lot to any room, so use that table, dresser, or cabinet. Fill it with children’s clothes, electrical equipment or folded bath towels. The point is to wear these pieces and watch your appreciation grow for their beauty, craftsmanship, and layers of aging. Along with their beauty and practicality, these are pieces that were made for such use and, in my opinion, blossom into their true beauty when worn and enjoyed on a daily basis. With daily use comes the need for a well thought out and executed care and maintenance plan (waxing, polishing, tightening joints… etc.) but it is also the case with new parts (they do not take care of themselves) so no additional work is required. Just a more focused and careful plan to extend the life of these parts along with their usefulness.
2. Put them on display. When collections of ‘little ones’ (tiny pieces, usually the ones that are easily held in the hands) are ready to go on display, I prefer to group them in the best possible way. This can take the form of a cabinet or shelf set aside especially for a collection, or it can be confined to one room in the house. You may decide that your kitchen is the appropriate place to display your collection of English pewter. The growing collection of Export Ware could be a surprising addition to the library and the many vintage military toys you’ve been collecting for years could be arranged in a grouping of shadow boxes that fill that long hallway or back stairs. I find that organizing the collections in this way focuses attention on the collection in a way that having these pieces scattered around the house does not.
One thing to always remember is that, with the exception of a very small number of museum-quality pieces, antiques should be touched, worn, and enjoyed by all members of the family. I regularly advise clients that if they think twice about letting the grandkids play in a room in the house because of the antiques on display; it would be better to keep the antiques in boxes and enjoy your little grandchildren.