The next idea with the arrangement of the bottles was to categorise them again. This time categorising them by the materiality of the objects.
For example on the middle shelf I arranged all of the items which were some type of bottle format. The Bottom shelf had all the boxes, and the top was miscellaneous, so it had packets, pots, paper, things that didn’t fit the term bottle or box.
In terms of the bottom two shelves I feel the composition worked well, however not so much on the top as they were all so different. They didn’t quite fit the same as the bottom two shelves did.
Perhaps I can be more selective with my items and only include the boxes for example? Or just the small items?
With the idea of order in my head, I decided to order my toiletry bottles in height/size order. So I placed the smallest items at the top front and the biggest items at the back bottom. This gave a hierarchy of height, which I felt was visually pleasing to the eye. To experiment with this more I could order them opposite, so biggest at the top and smallest at the bottom, what would this do?
The next arrangement I did was ordering the items in order from top left to bottom right by the products you use on your hair and face at the top and the ones further down the body such as hands further down. I did this to show the order they are used on the body.
This is similar to Hirt’s medical cabinets he installed. He originally ordered his products to relate with what drugs would be used for what part of the body. However he felt this arrangement wasn’t visually pleasing so rearranged them further to what suited in aesthetics. However I like how they work in my cabinet. Although some items are larger than others and perhaps set the balance off in it a bit I like the fact it has a specific order. Perhaps the viewer at first would not recognise this order, it would take time for it to be worked out which I like.
Once I had my cabinet painted I began to start playing around with the arrangement of my items inside of it.
With this arrangement, I grouped the items into categories. For example I grouped together; All of the medical items, all the hair, the make-up, body products, face products etc.
I grouped them as an initial starting point as I thought that seemed the most obvious arrangement to do due to the nature of each product.
I feel this worked well as it was clear to see the similar kinds of products were with each other creating system and consistency in the cabinet.
I began to play around with the ordering of the objects in the cabinet, however it wasn’t really working and I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do with the objects and the cabinet. My first idea was to cover the frame of the cabinet in trains tickets or wipes. It was then in a tutorial with Robin he suggested instead of sticking something to the cabinet, to actually change the cabinet in some way such as painting it. Because the wood of the cabinet was so dark perhaps I was focusing too much on the cabinet itself rather than what was inside of it.
I sanded the cabinet down to get rid of any varnish, dusted it, and began painting with white emulsion. I decided on white as it is a nice clean colour that would perhaps make the cabinet look more spacious and blend in with the white of the studio rather than stand out with this dark frame it had. Maybe I am focusing too much on the cabinet rather than what is inside it, so hopefully this will help me.
My initial plan was just to give the cabinet a couple of coats on the outside of white. However because of the mirrors inside, it was now reflecting the very obviously unpainted frame of the inside. This really annoyed me as I wanted it to just be white, so I had to take upon the tricky task of trying to paint inside of it. It was made more awkward as the shelves did not come out So I had to work around them which proved to be a lot more difficult than I first thought. However after some time the cabinet was painted! I feel this looks a lot better. I am now keen to explore the objects I have collected; especially as I have a lot more now to work with.
