The artist Toland Grinnell’s installation “Pied-à-terre,” now on display at the Brooklyn Museum, would make the ideal camping set for someone with absolutely no desire to ever sleep outdoors. It features 17 matching hand-made ivory trunks emblazoned in gold with the initials TG. Each one contains a household item, including a fully operational sink, a stove and cooking appliances, a dining table and chairs, a wine rack, a candelabra, a silver and china set, and a silk tent.

“The whole idea for the work came to me when my wife and I decided to go on a camping trip,” Mr. Grinnell said during a recent phone conversation. “Now, first you have to understand,” he said, “she’s a real fashionista. I watched her try to duplicate everything she uses in every day life for this trip. It was hilarious and horrible. But it started me thinking how dependent we are on material things, and how, in a way, they may be how our society will be remembered: By the objects we cherished.”

The fascinating oddities of “Pied-àterre” become even more pronounced when placed near the museum’s period rooms, where the chief curator, Kevin Stayton, decided the work should be installed. “For some time,” Mr. Stayton said, “we’ve tried to acquire contemporary art that resonates with art that we already have. In this case, Toland’s spoof of 21st-century excess could be seen as an extension of the more luxurious interiors in the period rooms.”

The museum’s intention, Mr. Stayton said, “is to integrate our collections, to show how tendrils from one connect with others.” Most museums organize their collections by material or by geography, Mr. Stayton said. In this case, the Brooklyn Museum sought to highlight less obvious relationships between various works. “We did this in our 2001 show ‘American Identities,’ when we mixed paintings and decorative arts from different parts of the world,” he said. “It can start you thinking in broader terms about what you’re looking at.”

In fact, the antecedents of Mr. Grinnell’s “Pied-à-terre” lie in the tradition of transportable luxuries that began in the late 1400s, when merchants and aristocrats traveled around Europe. Because it took three weeks to travel between Paris and Florence, the merchants needed to take their bathtubs and bedding along the way. Convertible furniture, which could be folded in boxes, had its roots in the campaign trunks of the 18th and 19th centuries. The installation also calls to mind the lavish camps of the 19th century in the Adirondack Mountains that were furnished with fancy accoutrements for millionaires.

Having his work placed near the period rooms thrills the 38-year-old Mr. Grinnell, a Brooklyn native who grew up visiting those very rooms with his mother. “I especially loved a Victorian room with its carved set of Noah’s Ark,” he said. “I’ve always liked the decorative arts. It’s probably because I come from a family of contractors, who were always interested in craftsmanship. As a child, I’d be dropped off at their shops before school and I’d play with the tools. I was about 7 or 8 when I made my first piece of furniture.”

While Mr. Grinnell was learning about masonry and stonework at his stepfather’s business, Urban DC, which handles about 60% of the historic preservation in New York, he began learning how the wealthy live from his mother, who oversaw the construction of highend residential homes on the upper West and East Sides. “I had a chance to see the most beautiful interiors,” he said. He then studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York and at the Centro Lorenzo de Medici in Italy, before working for a year for the Evergreen Painting Studios, the largest surface restoration company in America. Since then, Mr. Grinnell has had shows in London, Milan, and New York.

Mr. Grinnell holds a long view of the place of decorative arts in the art world. “When you go to museums,” he said, “you usually see examples of two things — the extremely luxurious items used by the rich, and those that were in common use, say, a 1660 German beer stein. But you hardly ever see what was used by the people in between. Those are the things I’m recreating.”

In recent years, Mr. Grinnell has been commissioned to create functional objects in addition to his installation pieces. In one instance, he produced a silk glove compartment for a patron. And when the French luggage maker Goyard commissioned him to produce an “Entertainment Center,” he stuffed a huge trunk with skateboards, a mini-bike, an iPod and speakers, and a built-in grill.

But then he did a complete turnaround and began creating reasonably priced bags for the masses, specifically for those who have young children, as he and his wife now do. He calls his company Mister B Bags, and offers diaper bags and tote bags in shops and on the Internet.

With the production of all these bags, it would seem Mr. Grinnell might have gotten around to designing new camping gear suitable for his wife and young son. “Are you kidding!” he said. “One camping trip was more than enough. It was an inspiration but it doesn’t need to be repeated.”