The start of the new year is traditionally when the collectors among us look around our homes, consider the accumulated dust on the credenzas, coffee tables and bureaus covered with knickknacks and trinkets, take a deep breath and pronounce, “It’s time to declutter.”

Then, if you’re me, you quickly find something more important to do instead — like head to a museum for an exhibit you’ve been wanting to see. In this case, “Victorian Clutter,” at the Morse Museum of American Art in Winter Park.

Ah, my compulsion to pick up a snow globe here, a paperweight there runs deep.

And it turns out that Americans of the Victorian era, from the 1830s until the turn of the century, accumulated tchotchkes for the same reasons we do today — to express themselves, to take a stand and occasionally just to show off.

Drawn from the Morse’s own permanent collection, “Victorian Clutter” might even make you take a second look at that dusty tango dancer figurine you picked up on a whim in Buenos Aires or the piece of broken musk ox bone you brought back, possibly against customs regulations, after a hiking trip in Greenland.

“You think of a thrift store, all that stuff you dismiss — ugh, it’s just clutter,” says museum director and chief curator Jennifer Thalheimer. “But then you see it in its proper context, and there’s a new appreciation.”

To provide that appreciation, the exhibit starts at the beginning of serious collecting, when the Industrial Revolution meant that items could be mass produced more cheaply and the resulting economic changes made a larger middle class that could afford to buy things because they liked them, not just because they needed them.

The growth of the American railway network also prompted a big change: Train schedules meant knowing the precise time became important, creating an important category of collectibles.

“La Petite Pensée,” an 1870 marble sculpture by Thomas Ball, is one of the items on view in the Morse Museum of American Art’s “Victorian Clutter” exhibit. (Courtesy Morse Museum of American Art)

“A whole wave of personal timepieces became popular,” Thalheimer says. “Everybody had to have a pocket watch.”

Not just functional, such watches were art in their own right — and said something about the personality of their wearer.

So did a much wider range of braclets and pendants, now being produced at a lower price point in factories.

Here’s a collectible that serves a comforting purpose: An 1882 teapot made of copper, silver and wood from Gorham Manufacturing Company of Providence, Rhode

Island. It’s on view as part of the Morse Museum’s “Victorian Clutter” exhibit. (Courtesy Morse Museum of American Art)

“Even the jewelry was no longer a personalized piece handmade for you,” Thalheimer says. With new designs coming out all the time, it was easy to want more and more.

You can start to see how Victorian bureaus were already becoming a place for clutter.

And just like in modern times, there were people to tell you what you should buy.

“Books and magazines are pushing ideas,” Thalheimer said. Call those authors the influencers of their day.

One idea that took off: “Iron items became more prevalent,” Thalheimer said. “This was a symbol of strength and worth and endurance.”

This fan, circa 1890, demonstrates the Victorian fascination with black items and mourning after the death of Britain’s Prince Albert. Made of wood, paper and paint, the fan was sold by retailer Galathea of Havana, Cuba. It’s part of the Morse Museum’s “Victorian Clutter” exhibition. (Courtesy Morse Museum of American Art)

Another collectible shows the darker side of the times.

In the exhibition is a ledger book containing illustrations by imprisoned Indigenous people in St. Augustine, something unique and to be prized in a middle-class home — but at the expense of the exploited.

While the era “offers opportunity to some people, it harms others,” Thalheimer says. “There’s always a downside.”

The way people cluttered up their homes, with jewelry, vases, kettles, paintings and more, has a modern-day counterpart in what we post on Facebook.

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“This was their social media, them telling you who they were,” Thalheimer says.

And just like the obligatory magnet picked up in a foreign city today, “every time they went somewhere they would get a new piece,” she says, while I think of that little Buddha carving at home that I picked up in Japan.

The advent of World’s Fairs only increased travel and interest in souvenirs from far-off places. And when Queen Victoria put on her widow’s weeds after the death of her husband, the world took notice.

“Mourning became the world’s obssession,” Thalheimer says. “The vogue came in for everything black — fans, jewelry.”

Like today, politics also drove some collecting choices. A painting depicting an enslaved woman petitioning for her freedom would have identified the owner as an abolitionist.

Just like our collectibles prompt conversations with friends and family, Thalheimer hopes visitors will be moved to sit and chat about what they see. To that end, more seating — including a low-to-the-ground tete-a-tete sofa — has been placed in galleries to encourage lingering.

As trains made time keeping more important, people started collecting pocket watches, adding to their “Victorian Clutter,” as an exhibition at the Morse Museum of American Art is named. This one, made of gold, enamel and steel, dates from circa 1880 and belonged to Charles Grandjean Perrenoud-Comtesse. (Courtesy Morse Museum of American Art)

“We’re trying to create opportunities where people can come and sit and take some time,” Thalheimer said. “We want you to meet your friends here.”

The buzz seems to be growing. The museum set record attendance last year, said Arielle  Courtney, the museum’s director of community relations. The museum saw an uptick in guests after participating in last year’s Immerse festival, she said, and it now has a presence on TikTok — where visitors like to show themselves with the museum’s colorful treasures.

Sounds like a great way to put off decluttering my own home just a little bit longer.

Follow me at facebook.com/matthew.j.palm or email me at mpalm@orlandosentinel.com. Find more entertainment news and reviews at orlandosentinel.com/entertainment or sign up to receive our weekly emailed Entertainment newsletter.

‘Victorian Clutter’

Where: Morse Museum of American Art, 445 N. Park Ave. in Winter Park
When: 9:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays, with extended hours until 8 p.m. on Fridays; 1-4 p.m. Sundays
Cost: $8 ($7 seniors, $3 students)
Info: morsemuseum.org

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2026/01/20/victorian-clutter-morse-museum/