‘What We Keep’: 50 creatives on the objects they collect and use in their homes

To Jean Lin, design is elemental. Since opening her Tribeca gallery Colony — a serene loft on bustling Canal Street — in 2014, she’s launched countless careers, nurtured recent art school grads, and connected people with taste to objects that excite them. Now, after a decade in business, and just as she’s moving into a new space a few blocks away, she’s published her first book, What We Keep: Advice from Artists and Designers on Living with the Things You Love, which is available to order now.

'What We Keep: Advice from Artists and Designers on Living with the Things You Love'

The book features over 50 home tours and studio visits. Among them are TWA Hotel designer Adam Rolston’s vibrant Washington Heights apartment; Mira Nakashima’s residence in New Hope, Pennsylvania; and Workstead co-founder Robert Highsmith’s 19th-century house in western Connecticut. The interiors, and objects within them, are ravishing. 

They also tell deeply personal stories about why collectors become so obsessive about their things. It might be because of the thrill of finding something, because they view themselves as caretakers of history, or simply because they felt a visceral reaction to the pattern of a textile or shape of a bowl. 'These pieces and the places they inhabit can reveal something of who we are—as creative professionals, as neighbours, as friends, as mothers and daughters, as contributors to a society—a place in history that we can be proud of,' Lin writes.

What We Keep arrives during a moment of renewed interest in collecting. Recent books like The New Antiquarians and How to Live with Objects have articulated the novel ways that younger generations are cultivating their collections and Lin’s tome belongs to the same ecosystem. However, few of the people in the book actually think of themselves as 'collectors' in the traditional sense, even though they all share a well-articulated sense of aesthetics and taste. 

'It was really important to me that what’s in the book didn't feel unattainable and it didn't feel statusy in any way,' Lin tells Wallpaper*. 'I'm not somebody who lives an extravagant life because I just, it's not who I am, but that doesn't mean that I'm not surrounded by beautiful design and that I don't care about design and about beauty.'

You won’t find the usual suspects on the pages, like the design objects with name recognition that set records at auction. But you will see unexpected items, like interior designer Ghislane Viñas’s collection of rubber vaginas, which she unabashedly displays on a coffee table; Brooklyn architect Brent Buck’s troupe of mid-century Danish pepper mills, which he lovingly repaired and restored over the years; and dozens of cacti in the home of Santa Fe furniture designer Jonathan Boyd ('I don’t go for the rarest; I go for the ones that I find to be the most beautiful, and it takes me all over the place,' he says).

The stories behind these collections are often quite moving. For Preeti Sriratana, a New York–based architect, acquiring multiple portraits of the same woman by Kambui Olujimi helped him process the grief he felt after losing his grandmother. They also reflect the reality that many people become accidental collectors. To wit: Worrell Yeung’s mismatched pairs of cocktail glasses ('I guess we only ever buy two,' he comments in the book) and the many empty decorative boxes in Rolston and his partner’s apartment ('We could put something in them. They represent potential,' he says).

There’s a refreshing sentiment throughout the book that if something speaks to you, it’s worth listening to what it says. 'When people talk about the things that they surround themselves with, it uncovers truths that aren't normally uncovered,' Lin says. 'A lot of the people who I asked to be in the book, aren't necessarily all asked about their things. That uncovered a lot of juicy, fun, and intimate stories.'

What We Keep: Advice from Artists and Designers on Living with the Things You Love is published from Abrams Books