Eclectic or I Collect it!

We were discussing our decorating styles and I was sure that I was ECLECTIC.  I like the sound of the word, the free all over the place meaning, and the slightly baffling expression of people when it's thrown into everyday conversation.  Later that evening trying to start a conversation with my husband I asked, "Am I eclectic?"  And he said, " Yeah you collect it. You collect everything."  So I started looking around and I DO collect things... lots of things.  I've heard that if you have three of something , you've started a collection therefore to keep from being a hoarder there must be RULES....

 

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Glass paperweights

Rule:  Never pay over $10 unless you are in love!  Try to get people to give them to you as Christmas presents.  No one can pick an ugly one.  I display them on candlesticks to give them height and to catch the light.

Midcentury Glass

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rule:  I'm in love with its color and unusual shapes.  Right now I am buying any Murano piece that I can find within my price range $10-$20.  I'm trying to find glass with movement and flow.

 

 

 

Old Bottles

Rule:  Most of my bottles were collected from our family land in Georgia and from Ascension Island in the middle of the Atlantic.  I find bottles not buy them.

Minerals

 

 

Rules:  I love geodes, agates, coprolite( dinosaur poo), rose quartz, amethysts, and as I tell my husband around birthdays and anniversaries - diamonds.

Old Hand-Colored Photos

 Rules:  I inherited some Wallace Nuttings from my grandmother and started collecting old hand-colored photos but they are almost priced out of my range.  I have 10 so it is a collection but I want MORE.  Saw some in another booth at the antique mall where I have a booth and didn't buy them.  I'm still feeling the regrets.

Religious items

Rules:  I've been find beautiful carved saints and old Bibles at the auctions and yard sales I frequent and can not pass them up.  I like my modern Madonna and my 18th Century carved Brazilian St. Jose.  This picture looks like I need to dust!

Rules:  I can't have any rules for books.  I buy books.  I stack them everywhere and pick them up and read different ones all the time.  I read a different book in each room...fiction in the bedroom, travel in the bathroom, non-fiction in the living room, and decorating/gardening/cooking books in the kitchen. 

Rules:  Schools have stopped buying globes for classrooms.  They think they are too low tech but in reality a globe in your hand is holding the whole wide world and all its possibilities.  They are informative, colorful, shapely, interactive, and a child can fill hours with the game of where are we now. Globes are easy to date by what countries are on them. I like globes that have Ceylon off tip of India which changed name to Sri Lanka in 1972, pre W. Germany 1949-1990, USSR, 1922-1991, and the various Congos especially Belgium Congo 1908-1966.

Soooo I am a I-collect-it rather than Eclectic.  Will discuss my crystal candlesticks obsession, my carved animal collection, my husband's old camera cache, and the art gallery that I call my house on other posts.  So to fellow collectors(hoarders) set up some rules and maybe you too can stay in control just like me!!!