Cabinets of Curiosities I

A couple months ago I introduced you to my friend Sidney, who lives in Mesilla NM in a small apartment filled with an incredible collection of wonders of the world. We looked at one little corner of her apartment, where she keeps sands in a vast array of colors from all over the world in tiny vials.

But surrounding the perimeter of her living room are a number of plain white cabinets that are unprepossessing from the outside, yet filled with small treasures that she has artistically arranged both by color and by unifying themes. At the entrance to her apartment is a corner with two of these cabinets and a credenza in between. These are the cabinets with the more subtle colors of the natural world -

In this first video clip Sidney shares the story of how this all first began for her, and then opens up the cabinet to the right of where she is sitting. I think of this as her White cabinet, though that doesn’t begin to describe the wealth of neutrals tones that live inside.

Next we move on to what I think of as her Black cabinet -

Again she shares her stories of some of the treasures inside, though the Black cabinet actually begins with the color purple -

And finally Sidney goes to the credenza between the two cabinets. Mostly yellows, but with perfect splashes of turpquoise, the color she loves the most -

While there are plenty of beautiful objects and books with their own stories in this credenza, I was particularly entranced when Sidney pulled out one of her special treasure boxes -

One of the fun aspects for me in going through Sidney’s cabinets was when something emerged that I had collected for her along the way on some of my travels. And in turn, Sidney has sent me many wonderful things over the years, including a very magical orange treasure box -