Sandra Soss has cultivated her approach to decor since she was a child, but it was only four years ago that she learned the word for it—bricolage. Soss came across the term in a word-a-day calendar, defined as “something constructed by using whatever materials happen to be available.”
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Soss’s three-bedroom Lincoln Square apartment is jam-packed with curios recent and old, modern and country, industrial and handmade, culled over the years from thrift stores and rummage sales. But if the components are the results of happy shopping accidents, each placement is painstakingly intentional. They “all go together when I get them home,” she says, forming a kind of museum of the mind, a catalog of personal history, emotions, and inspirations. Cabinets teem with small dolls, built-in bookshelves by the fireplace house a sizable collection of American art pottery. She transformed a cramped bedroom into a cozy workshop with surplus retail shelving, on which she keeps vintage cameras, fabrics and notions, and art supplies.
“This is a stack of Ikea wooden CD storage drawers. I glued pieces of maps from an old atlas on the drawer fronts with some words and small images cut out of books and magazines I kept for making collages. I used a bundle of vintage wooden yardsticks and rulers I collected and wanted to display to finish the side and top surfaces.”
“Clever and beautiful packaging design has fascinated me for as long as I can remember–I always appreciated the package as much as what it held. When I couldn’t throw a box, tin, or package away I would use it to store something small like pins, buttons (another collection), pencils, or jewelry. One day I decided to gather a few boxes together to display in the empty cabinet and i realized i had a collection. Some of them are still full of buttons and pins, but they are much easier to enjoy on the shelves than closed up in a closet or drawer.”
