Finnabair: Vintage Style Curiosity Cabinet by Emilia Tapiola

Wednesday 19 May 2021

Vintage Style Curiosity Cabinet by Emilia Tapiola

I’ve wanted to create an old-fashioned curiosity cabinet (or I’d rather say memory box) for years and years, since childhood when I read how Jo March had one in the Little Men. I loved the idea of collecting nature’s treasures, lovingly store them, and carefully taking them out for looking every now and then…

I thought that now or never, it really is time to do something about it – and hopefully, to give you some inspiration to create your kind of treasure memory box, now on the brink of summer. There’s still time to search for a cabinet or box of your wishes and then prepare it for the treasures you’ll collect during the coming summer…

For my own memory box, I have used precious treasures from our family vacations. There are seashells, driftwood and sea glass from Britain and France, even from the Lofoten (which are, by the way, the islands up, up, up in the Arctic in Norway), I have included a ranunculus from Nice flower market and even a vintage rubber stamp found in Nice antique market, a coin I found on my birthday in Copenhagen… There are fossils from Lyme Regis and feathers from the D-Day beaches of Normandy, even one pottery piece from archaeological excavations in Tel Kinrot, Israel, over 3000 years old… Not to mention some lovely vintage buttons I got from my grandmother. You see, you can collect any kind of things that matters to you, and then create your kind of beautiful memory box. It doesn’t look like mine, it doesn’t have the same vintage colouring, but to preserve memories to cherish, that’d be a lovely summer project.

It really is an easy project to do, even if you do it my way and distress the box looking vintage. (If you happen to find a real vintage curiosity cabinet, consider yourself lucky and just skip the painting parts and move happily on to the collage making!)

I had a white, wooden box (originally designed for teabags, I think) measuring 30cm x 30cm, each individual box 7cm, to give you the idea of the size. I wanted it to look vintage, so I cut pieces of vintage book pages for each individual box and attached them with Soft Matte Gel. After drying, I primed the sides with white Heavy Gesso, also giving a light whitewash to the vintage papered backgrounds.

Because I wanted a light but still really, really distressed and tattered vintage look, I did not left the box without some painting. First, I mixed acrylic paints, Impastos Snow White, Dark Chocolate, and Pitch Black and painted the whole thing, wiping most off with baby wipes but leaving traces of paint and colour especially in the corners. This gave the box a whole new look. But I wanted more, so I then applied a generous amount of Clear Crackle Texture Paste to the box and all its sides and let it dry for several hours.

After that, I mixed Liquid Acrylic paints Ink Black and Burnt Sienna and did the same I did with the Impastos: painted the whole thing and wiped/dabbed most off with baby wipes. And then the curiosity cabinet / memory box was ready to welcome the actual treasures.

At this point it’d be maybe wise to stop for a moment and think where you are going to store or keep the curiosity cabinet. You see, if you intend to put it on the wall, you need to arrange your compositions differently from the option of storing it flat. I decided to go for the option of storing it on the wall, so I needed to arrange the compositions keeping in mind they are actually looked not from upwards down, but horizontally.

For attaching the treasures, I used Heavy Body Gel as I knew it will make the compositions hold fast and last forever. I added (Victorian and Edwardian) vintage laces on some boxes to give a bit more dimension and break the rhythm of vintage book pages clearly showing.

I also collected moss, lichen, and dry hay from our garden to use as props. (Please do keep in mind that it might be illegal to take lichen or moss from the woods – you need to check your country’s regulations. In Finland it is illegal to collect moss or lichen still growing without asking permission from the landowner, but it is ok to collect some that is fallen from trees etc. In my case, I asked permission from myself and got an answer that it’d be ok just this once to rip some moss out from our lawn…) My idea was to add some natural elements to complement and underline the general, very natural look of the box and its treasures. I added just a tiny pieces of moss or lichen or hay among the other treasures, and I also used dried flowers a lot (all from our journeys, of course).

I wanted to add some tiny notes here and there but I am a bit silly in a way (well, yes, in more ways than one, but, you know) that instead of going for the most obvious choice of labeling the items according to the years and places for example (which is, by the way, completely normal and sensible and perhaps the best thing to do), but I wanted to add some poetic notes in there. So, I chose a poem by Emily Dickinson, to underline the whole idea of collecting moments and memories and treasuring them and appreciating them and making most of our lives, and typed it using my vintage typewriter and 200gm paper dyed with strong coffee.

And that was it, really. It is just as easy and straightforward as you make it to be. I tried to show with my own curiosity cabinet that you can add just one fossil or stone or a seashell to one box, or then create a whole composition if you wish, creating true mini art capturing your moments to remember. But the main thing is to enjoy, to walk with your eyes open, to stop and admire, to treasure, to breathe, to see the beauty and wonder all around you, and preserve it.