Friday, September 6, 2013

Travel through treasures

When we are traveling, we love collecting unusual artifacts from destinations. Some for the fun of novelty... and others as pure inspiration. Often times we don't know how these artifacts are going to fit in our house or influence us in the future... but we have a gut feeling in our stomach that WE. MUST. TAKE. THEM. HOME. WITH. US.

These little treasure often come in odd sizes and shapes but we found a few clever ways to incorporate into our life at home so that they continue to remind us insights and lessons we have taken home from our journey and fuel our next trip as inspiration!

1. Organize them in a "Setzkasten"!
Setzkasten is a German word for treasure chest. We love using vintage letterpress drawers (which was used to organize alphabets in the letter press facility) to display odds and ends from our travel. Having a cabinet as a backdrop makes sure that tiny treasures don't get lost in the sea of objects in the house and ensures that they are celebrated... no matter how small they might be.

You can often find these cabinets on eBay by typing in "vtg printers drawer".





2. Glass jars
We are huge believers that "treasure" does not need to have any monetary value to anyone else... but simply meaningful to us. The collection of sand from different parts of the world create an almost three-dimensional archival binder for places where we traveled. So far our collection includes.. Black Rock City (Burning Man), Yakushima (Japan), Helgoland (Germany), Hawaii, etc. We feel that vintage medicine jars are perfect fit (both size and aesthetics) for these sand collections!

If you are interested, try typing in "vtg glass vials steampunk" on eBay!

Display as art(ifact)
This is a rusted tool we dug out from my grandfather's property in Yakushima. It was (literally) trash... but we loved how it aged so beautifully on the land where our family tie is so strong so we decided to bring home. We put it up on a white wall as a singular artifact and it is now a perfect art(ifact) that has so many stories to tell.

Use them!
Some objects we have collected from travel... are still in a good shape and we enjoy discovering new ways of using them in our everyday life. These little wooden boxes we found in Japan are meant to be a packaging for artisan ceramic pieces. (I know... only in Japan... packaging looks as good as an object that is inside.) They are perfect fit to keep all the little toys Roo is starting to collect (from a doll house props to lego pieces). So here they are! It is a great alternative to plastic Tupperware;) It adds so much character to her room and nothing like the worn-in feeling for kids' room!




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