A tour from the couch

Another walk down memory lane - here is a tour of the loungeroom from our old house complete with the finds I displayed there.

The couch - a delicious Danish mid-century style hand me down from my lovely sister in-law. I hope to give it the facelift it deserves soon with grey linen fabric.

The cushions - secondhand finds excepting the red one - an Irish holiday find in Blarney while visiting my other lovely sister in-law (I am super lucky - 2 great sisters and 2 great sister in-laws!)

The 70's 3D mounted mountain print - beautifully kitsch - picked up secondhand for next to nothing, all it's worth to many probably but not us.

The vintage office chair - an abandoned warehouse discovery of Craig's. It is now our absolute favourite and the chair for our little mans yearly portrait (by his photographer dad) - well starting this year as he is only 1 - eventually he will have all his photos from each year and we will give him the chair.

The globe - found in a secondhand shop in Marrickville one lazy browsing Sunday for a song

Then there is the rest of the knickknackery, the scenes I like to create and having four mantlepieces in that house enabled me to indulge this to its full.

The main mantlepiece (shown above with one of Craig's etchings) was decorated with all manner of found objects. I don't believe in limiting yourself to objects that are 'meant' to be or just bought to be displayed. I like to include anything that I find beautiful, interesting or unique. Why not fishing reels, grass fronds, metal tins, old cameras, bottles, cotton spools, letter press stamps - all of these things for me mean something and add history, texture and warmth that you just can't create when only displaying shiny new things. It is also autobiographical. It is like curating your own little museum - I would rotate it , with some favourite things staying in the permanent collection so to speak.

Having a whole second loungeroom/office with another vast mantlepiece begging
to be dressed we were in collector heaven.

Bring in the birds. These birds are contentious. They are a love or hate affair. For me it was definitely love at first sight. I found them at Husskisson Easter markets about 7 years ago on a stall of knickknackery, my favourite kind.

My general rule with these things is you pick the thing up examining it for a longer than acceptable time while you contemplate the purchase just in case someone else wants them - hands on is temporary ownership (same rules at Op Shops). In this case for me there was nothing to contemplate - I loved them and they were only a few dollars each but against my judgement, and the rules, I briefly walked away. I had to find Craig to gauge his reaction to them - if he didn't love them too I didn't know if I could go ahead with it - not because I was considering his feelings, oh no I was considering mine - I couldn't bear to have them and not be able to put them on show. He loved them too, luckily - in all their resplendent glory - they had to come home with us. The rest was built around them, West German Ceramics, Deco glass, 70's bottles and my little but growing collection of white milk glass.

And there you have it - my old loungeroom - minus a few great etchings of Craig's I haven't shown and the bits I didn't like - like the blue carpet. It's mostly now in storage but I will start to curate again soon enough - I can't help myself.