As a serious antiques collector since my school days, taking care of one’s collection, keeping tabs on it, remembering what’s in your collection, what you’ve bought, sold, traded or given away, and how to protect, store and display one’s collection is something that is always on your mind.

In this posting, I’m going to be talking about display-cabinets and cases, and what sorts of choices and options there are out there for you to consider, and what issues you yourself need to consider when you select a case or cabinet, dependent on the types of antiques you collect.

Cabinets and Cases – What Are They?

Before we get swept away with the fascination about our intriguing subject-matter, let’s first understand one thing:

Cabinets are not cases, and cases are not cabinets. They are two different things, and each is used for different items. Alright?

Alright.

Display Cabinets

A display CABINET is a freestanding unit or piece of furniture, designed to exhibit the items stored within it. They can be tall and thin, low and rectangular, square, modular and angular. They usually have glass sides and doors and multiple shelves. They may or may not be lockable.

Benefits of display-cabinets is that they’re larger and can keep a larger amount of (or larger-sized) items safe and clean. For a relatively small footprint, they can store and display multiple shelves or layers of collectives and therefore take up a small amount of floor-space for the amount of items that they can store. The disadvantages are their weight and lack of portability.

Display Cases

By comparison, a display CASE is a shallow, flat, box-like container, usually with a glass-topped lid. They’re usually small enough to be somewhat portable and are typically used for displaying small items such as pens, coins, stamps, etc. Basically, anything small that wouldn’t really suit a larger display cabinet, because they would get lost among all the bigger items. They may or may not be lockable, just like their larger counterparts, and may or may not include lighting features.

The benefits of display cases is that they’re smaller and more portable. This makes them great for things like displaying your collections or items for sale, at antiques fairs, collectors’ fairs and conventions, or for displaying your collections in a wider selection of areas (in your study, on the coffee table in your living room, etc).

The disadvantages of display cases is that they take up a LOT of space. Since you can’t stack them when they’re in use, they can take up a lot of space, compared with the relatively small footprint vs. large storage space, of a display cabinet.

Cabinets or Cases? What’s Best for You?

Cabinets are better if what you’re displaying is large, bulky or heavy. Silverware, brassware, antique optical equipment, books, porcelain, etc. Things that you don’t have to strain your eyes to notice through the glass.

Cases are better for displaying smaller things with low profiles, such as coins, stamps, pens, collections of snuffboxes, pocketknives, lighters, and so on.

When deciding to buy a display-unit for your collections, you need to figure out what’s going to go into it, how heavy your collection is, and where the case or cabinet is going to go. Will the shelves support the weight of that beautiful French porcelain censer? Will the lid close on top of your favourite guilloche enamel table-lighter? Will you be able to arrange things the way you want them to look?

These are all things that you need to consider. If you buy a set of display cabinets – do you have the wall-space for them? Where will you hang your pictures, photographs and clocks? Will it take up space that you need for other things? So much to think about.

Display & Lighting

Once you’ve decided on which option works best for you – cabinets or cases, then the next thing to consider is how to display your collection and whether or not you wish to include any form of illumination.

With a flat case, how you arrange your collection is up to you, but with display cabinets, there are certain limitations that you need to consider.

First – how stable are your cabinets? To provide ballast, heavier, bulkier items should go at the bottom and lighter and smaller things further up. Larger items should be placed at the back of shelves, and smaller items closer to the front, so that all pieces may be seen, with minimal obstruction between one piece and another.

As much as possible, take full advantage of all the space available to you. Small pieces may be displayed by hanging them from hooks, which you can stick to the sides or backs of your shelves. Narrow-depth, smaller-sized display-boxes with transparent windows, may be used to display smaller items, within the main cabinets, in order to maximise the vertical space between your shelves. This can make it easier to see particularly small items and if these display-boxes can be stacked or otherwise arranged, then it frees up even more space for larger items.

Along with how to display your items comes the issue (or non-issue, as the case may be) of illuminating your display.

Naturally, display cases are generally easier to illuminate. A lamp or two, strategically placed, is usually sufficient to light up your prized collection, but when it comes to larger receptacles, such as cabinets, some form of integrated lighting is either included, or at least, recommended.

Whether it’s battery-powered or comes with a plug and lead, lights should be unobtrusive and shouldn’t get in the way of whatever it is that you’re trying to illuminate. It’s best to stick them in corners or edges, or on the undersides of your shelves, so that they’re out of the way, but still give plenty of illumination.

What Lights Are Best?

It really depends on what your budget and personal situation is. These days, there are a wide range of options. Ideally, you want lights that are small, unobtrusive, and bright. In this arena, we have bar lights, strip lights, and puck lights, all utilising extremely powerful LEDs to produce the necessary illumination. Each of them has their benefits and drawbacks.

Bar lights are comparatively bulky and take up the most space overall. They work off of batteries and/or cables, and this can mess up your delicately placed displays. If you have a particularly LARGE display cabinet, however, and can spare the space, and require the light, then bar lights might be the way to go!

LED strip lights are much smaller in profile, while still being extremely bright. These can vary from very, very, VERY long strips which are typically powered by plug-leads and switches, and comparatively small strips, which are battery-powered. These are often great for small or medium-sized cabinets or smaller display-cases since they don’t take up much room. You just need to think about where you’re going to hide the extra leads, plugs, switches, and battery-boxes.

The last option is using puck lights. Puck lights get their name because they’re flat, round and chunky – like hockey pucks. Puck lights are cheap – A pack of four or six cost comparatively little, they take ordinary AA-size batteries, and require no leads or switches. They can be mounted almost anywhere, and are very bright. Also, you can get them with remote controllers. That way, you can switch on loads of pucks at once, and then them off at once, requiring just a couple of clicks of a button. Useful, if you have twelve lights to turn on and off.

The only potential downside to puck-lights is that they are VERY expensive in BATTERIES. The average puck-light takes three batteries to operate. This may not sound like much (my flashlight only takes TWO batteries!), but when you’re trying to light up a LOT of pucks, the number of batteries required can easily run into the dozens! That said, they do last a long time.

Shelving Types

When it comes to shelves in your display cabinets, you generally have two options: Conventional wooden shelves, and glass shelves.

Wooden shelves are more sturdy and can take more weight. On the flipside, they’re bulky, weigh a lot, and impede the passage of light.

The alternative is having shelves made of glass. Glass has numerous advantages. It’s light, it means you need fewer lights to illuminate your cabinet, and they take up much less space. The only problems with glass are that glass shelves can be scratched, broken and cannot take excessively heavy loads – so like, I wouldn’t suggest putting your Victorian-era editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica on glass shelves, for example. Glass shelves also show off dust far more than wooden ones.

Doors and Windows

Whether or not your display cabinets or cases have doors or windows is up to you. But there are certain advantages and disadvantages.

The main disadvantage is weight. Such additions as doors, glass, and handles, hinges etc, do add considerably to the weight of your cabinet or case. It’s more things to break, more things to go wrong. If you do transport your cabinets or cases and they have glass doors and windows, make sure you pad and restrain them securely during transit, to prevent cracks and breakage.

However, glass doors and windows do have advantages. They let in more light, while at the same time, keeping out dust, prying fingers, and other grime. With the right accessories, doors can also be locked, for added security. An alternative for doors when it comes to display cases, is to have a lockable drawer setup, where the entire case can be slid out from under the glass for arranging and displaying items, before the entire thing is slid back in and locked for security.

Concluding Remarks

For the serious collector, having somewhere to store, and more importantly, display your collections is always important. It’s not something to be rushed into, however and as much time as necessary should be taken in deciding what you want and how you want it to look. Remember that your deciding factors should be things like: What are you displaying? What is your budget? How much space do you have, and how can you maximise it?

Do you need to worry about things like earthquakes? Storms? Do your cabinets or cases require anchoring to protect them from toppling or falling? What’s the largest or heaviest thing that you’ll be putting inside?

Think about all these factors and more, before making any serious moves.