Twelve Tchotchkes To Kickstart Your Curio Collection

On the second shelf from the top, between a small brass owl of uncertain origin and a hotel ashtray from a Las Vegas casino that closed in 1987, there is a ceramic hand giving the thumbs up. It is four inches tall. It cost three dollars at an antique mall in New Jersey. It is completely correct.

A curio collection is not a theme or a vibe. It is not the same thing as having a lot of stuff. It is a set of objects that share a sensibility without sharing a category – the sensibility of someone who picks things up, turns them over, and knows. The line between a curio collection and clutter is not about what you own; it is about whether each thing was chosen, and whether you could defend it in a sentence.

You have probably already started one without calling it that. Most people have. Here are twelve things to add.

Where to start looking

Antique malls and estate sales first. The supply of interesting small objects is enormous and the prices are low, especially for things that do not have an obvious category – which is exactly what you are after. Go without a specific object in mind. Go with a feeling. You will know it when you find it.

Thrift stores are good for ceramics and glass. eBay is useful once you know what you are looking for and want a specific version of it. And look at your own shelves before you buy anything – you probably already own two or three things that belong in a curio collection and have been mishoused in a drawer.

1. A ceramic animal with an unsettling expression

Not cute. Not menacing. Somewhere specifically in between – the ceramic animal that looks like it knows something. A dog with too-wide eyes, a cat in slightly wrong proportions, a small bear whose face conveys mild disappointment in everything it surveys. These were produced in enormous quantities between 1940 and 1975 and nobody knows what to do with them. Thrift stores have them constantly. You do know what to do with them.

2. A snow globe with an inexplicable subject

Not a landmark. Not a city skyline. Something that has no obvious reason to exist as a snow globe – a single cow in a field, a dentist's chair, a man fishing in weather that is now, inside the globe, a blizzard. Someone designed this. Someone approved it. Someone put it in a gift shop and someone else bought it, and eventually it ended up in your hands.

The inexplicability is the whole point.

3. A small framed portrait of a stranger

A formal photograph, a painted miniature, a school portrait from the 1960s – any image of a specific person whose name you will never know. Prop it or hang it. When people ask who it is, you can honestly say you inherited it. You chose them, which is its own kind of inheritance.

4. A brass object of unclear original function

Heavy, patinated, probably Victorian or early industrial, with a hinge or a dial or a clasp that suggests purpose without revealing it. These exist at every antique fair, never labeled with anything more specific than "brass piece" or "mechanical tool." The ambiguity is the object. Someone will pick it up, turn it over, and say, what do you think this was for?

That question is the whole reason to have it.

5. A novelty ashtray – hotel or airline branded, pre-1980

Ceramic or glass, with a logo that no longer exists. Pan Am ones are famous and priced accordingly; the Holiday Inn ones, the Howard Johnson ones, the regional airline ones – still findable, still cheap, still perfect. A tchotchke with a brand name has a biography. You may not know the story, but you can feel its outline.

6. A souvenir from somewhere specific

Not a tasteful souvenir. The bad version – a painted wooden spoon from a country you have never visited, a resin lighthouse with a thermometer built in that stopped working, a commemorative plate from a regional event in 1983. The rule is specificity. A snow globe from New York is nothing. A snow globe from Branson, Missouri, featuring a specific theater that hosted a specific country singer for three seasons starting in 1991: that is something.

7. A single ceramic tile with a hand-painted motif

Portuguese azulejo, Mexican Talavera, Dutch Delft, an English transfer-print tile with a bird – any tile made to be part of something larger, now alone on a shelf, complete. These are everywhere and beautiful and cost almost nothing. The only requirement: the motif must be specific. A particular bird. A particular scene. A particular blue.

8. Something with a face that has no business having one

A teapot with a face. A rock painted to resemble a face. A knotted piece of driftwood that looks like a face without having been carved into one. Objects that return your gaze belong in every curio collection. The face does not need to be good. It does not need to be intentional. It just needs to be there, looking back.

9. A glass paperweight with something suspended inside

A flower, a millefiori pattern, a bubble that appeared during cooling and got incorporated rather than discarded. Antique paperweights from Baccarat or Saint-Louis can cost thousands; the ones from Murano and the craft glass revival of the 1970s cost almost nothing and are often as beautiful. Hold it up to a window. What is inside changes depending on the angle, which is more than most objects manage.

10. A thimble, chosen for the image on it

Not a thimble collection – a thimble. One, chosen because of what it depicts: a specific scene, a surprising image, something hand-painted in miniature that rewards attention. Small enough to hold in two fingers. Detailed enough to spend real time with. Cheap enough that getting it wrong costs nothing, so you will not.

11. A small trophy for something nobody remembers

A little league trophy from 1974. A bowling league plaque. A certificate for something called the Regional Sales Excellence Award, Second Place, 1989. The engraved name is part of the object. Someone won this. Someone kept it somewhere. The fact that it ended up on your shelf is not sad – it is the second chapter of a thing that did not know it was going to get one.

12. The Vase

Everything else on this list you have to find. You drive to the estate sale, rifle through the back of the antique mall booth, scroll eBay until something stops you. The Vase is different. You have to know to want it. It is, first, a vase. A good one – heavy in the hand, clean in the line, with a matte finish that earns its place on a shelf of considered objects without asking for attention. Put flowers in it or don’t. It holds the eye either way. It is also a glass bong. A very good one.

Not disguised as a vase. Not shaped to look like a vase while clearly being something else. It is both things, fully, by design – discretion as an aesthetic virtue rather than a workaround. The topper lifts off cleanly. The interior glass is flawless. This is a piece built for the shelf, not the drawer.

Someone will pick it up eventually. They always do. They will turn it over the way guests turn over anything beautiful and unfamiliar, notice the weight of it, find the topper, figure out what they are holding, and look at you from across the room. That look is the whole point. It is why every object on this list exists – the second take, the quiet recalibration, the room getting slightly more interesting than it was.

Most of the things on this list require luck to find. This one requires taste to choose.

Available at yourmantelpiece.com.