When Melissa Johnson moved into her North Chattanooga home a year ago, even the arched doorways and above-the-street setting of the 1920s domicile wasn’t quite enough character for her.

So the 46-year-old artist, who is pursuing a master’s degree in art education, set to work making the space her own, beginning with two C-words: color and collections.

From Chalkware fruit molds above the archway leading to the kitchen to vintage tea pitchers, magnets and plastic swizzle sticks in all shapes and colors, Ms. Johnson’s collections reflect her love of all things playful and whimsical and her romance with an earlier era. History, she says, is essential.

“You can’t build history, and you can’t create experiences,” she said. “An older home has history. The human touch is present in an older home.”

It was the abundance of older homes in the Chattanooga area that drew Ms. Johnson when she left Knoxville following a separation.

“If I lived in Chattanooga, I wanted something 80 to 100 years old,” she said. “I like seeing where someone else has been before.”

She furnishes her home by attending estate sales and visiting vintage stores. Words like “Pottery Barn” and “IKEA” don’t exist in Ms. Johnson’s space.

She describes estate sales as a “bizarre practice,” indicating several of the magnets on her decorated refrigerator.

“All these magnets (were) on the (homeowner’s) refrigerator,” she said. “And they (were) for sale.”

The love of all things old and storied began, as many loves do, in her childhood.

“My parents used to have booths at flea markets when I was a little girl,” she said.

It was during a stint as a camp counselor in an Amish community in Shipshewana, Ind., that she started collecting.

“I want things that have been touched, and I want to use them again,” Ms. Johnson said.

A “Make Love Not War” sign that hangs in the kitchen once hung over her mother’s vanity. It reminds her of growing up in the ’60s and ’70s, and family debates.

“I feel like I don’t want those days to go away,” she said.

The art on the walls is all hers, colorful paintings honoring artists she’s known, or witty musings, such as a painting of an astronaut imagining the perfect woman as various facets of dessert.

Besides estate sales, one of Ms. Johnson’s favorite places to buy household items is a store called Legacy in Knoxville. It is there that her sons, both in their early 20s, bought her the orange embossed vinyl armchair that sits in her living room. The clock and sconces above the fireplace are from Legacy as well.

In the small foyer between the dining room and the kitchen, Ms. Johnson has what she calls her Jesus message center, a small area of religious icons. Raised Christian fundamentalist, the message center, she said, is her way of bringing a sense of levity to faith and religion in her home.

“It’s making things more lighthearted,” she said.

She has Tupperware in pastel colors and plastic curtains with pictures of Dutch children on her kitchen windows. It has, she said, a mid-20th-century-in-Florida look.

“People back then were so free with color,” she said. “I kind of miss that. As a kid, I loved that.”

She said she wouldn’t want to live somewhere she was pressured to live up to fads or someplace that didn’t feel like it had a sense of history to it.

“Newer homes don’t feel homey,” she said.

And wherever she goes, her ever-growing collections go with her and make any space her own. Collections tell the story of experiences, she said, and experiences make a house a home.

Comments