table or in a mosaic of pictures on a wall. In this case, the artfulness of the combination can

create its own aesthetic pleasure. Pictures can be hung directly on a wall with a picture hook; or,

to allow for a changing display, a picture rail or shallow ledge can be incorporated in the room’s

design. Tackable wall surfaces might also be considered for displaying more informal graphic

ephemera and children’s art. Similar in spirit are chalkboard or dry-erase whiteboard surfaces to

Since accessories and most works of art are relatively small elements within an environment,

they tend to be grounded in larger arrangements of objects and in specic places. An assem-

blage of objects or pictures can create its own visual identity by virtue of the cohesion resulting

from the close adjacency and similarities or differences among objects. There are two common

strategies of arrangement. Collections are displays of like objects, such as antique mechani-

cal toys, arrowheads, or prints of natural history phenomena. Still lifes are displays organized

purely for aesthetic effect, typically through the juxtaposition of disparate objects that share

one or several attributes. For example, a still life might combine green objects, but with a range

of textures from rough to shiny and a range of proportions from tall to low and horizontal.