VICTORIANA

[Mysterious Mose]

I have a reputation People come up and offer scary stuff and info once they know.
My last name is Crowfield ( in Dutch) and one day as I left the house there was the stuffed crow in front on the doorstep. The sinister stuff is mostly gifted or traded, the weird stuff is on ebay or in dodgy antique/second hand shops. I work in a Pathology department myself and our institute has some amazing stuff in jars. You should NOT use formaldehyde to preserve stuff for permanent display, it's so very bad for you. We use Kaiserling's solution, that's glycol, alcohol and food preservatives mostly.

 

[Dr Doran]

Excellent advice, Mose. Next time I'm on the Continent perhaps I'll pay you a visit, only if that is OK with you.

 

[Mysterious Mose]

You're very welcome, but "if that's OK" is no way to get a reputation for being sinister. Just lie down on our doorstep.

Here's some weird stuff. Some Victorian, all pretty old.

Absinthe Pernod bottle, ashtray and spoons, pinheads, a phonofiddle, Jazzkazoo, papier mache bulldog head and decorated coffinhandles.

Phoney shrunken heads, necktie made from feathers.

Medicine cabinet:
Canned heat, jamaica gingers (jakeleg), pickelhelmet polish, Boyards, the heaviest cigarettes in the world (banned),burnt cork tins, Mortifer rat poison.

Opium, the new vice, in a bamboo frame. Religious tracts by the armless guitarist, mounted piranha

Kobe diceman, a Japanese automaton, although this one doesn't know any moves, except his eyes pop out. Stuffed snake, old books, Mike recommended H.H. Ewers.

Clown bank, vaudeville photo of a "chinese" stringband, they do a great version of 'Stay out of the South', pickled kitten, Willson octagonal glasses, cracked the first day I got 'em,
brass knuckles, hair memento, pinhead-ish figurine, stuffed monkey.
The white gloves belonged to a pallbearer, who lost his right index when he was a coffinmaker. His wife modified the glove. True story. White gloves were used for children and nuns, virgins.

Some tramp art frames, cannibal lithograph, hangman lore, sad nurse painting, late 1800's bulldog skull, pinheads with swastikas and a scruffy old crow.

 

[Atterbury Dodd]

"Chinese Syncopators", that's a new one!lol Usually it was minstrel bands. I wonder if there is a place to hear their music?

 

[Mysterious Mose]

Maybe, give 'em a google: "Pickard's Chinese Syncopators"
Edit: Yep!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2UdmdFqk8Y

 

[Dr Doran]

Wow Mose. This is the kind of bric-a-brac that I like.

I have a few items that might be of interest.

Idle Dame, can we have a few photos? I promise I won't freak out at the coprophilia, I mean coprolites.

 

[Atterbury Dodd]

Maybe, give 'em a google: "Pickard's Chinese Syncopators"
Edit: Yep!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2UdmdFqk8Y

Thanks! They look like they really are Chinese. I thought it would have been a take off like the old "Blackface" shows. Interesting.

 

[Idledame]

Well, not nearly as impressive as previous posts, but here's some of it:

pig skull chomping old plastic army guy in front of vintage ice cream maker

Chicken skeleton I put together. In days before hot glue guns...white glue meant everything would sag by the time it dried. Coat hanger wire through vertabrate was too hard to shape the way I wanted. Even after boiling and bleaching, my cat still chewed on it. Hand painted feather fan in background.

trilobite in front of turquoise and you know what.

A real Edison bulb that still works. I'm told they had to change design so that bulbs would have to be replaced. Originals lasted almost forever. Also a gourd etched with house and horse. My dad found this when a building from 1800s was torn down in San Pedro.

A knife my dad found in the desert. Must have been movie prop. Who else would use a knife like that in the California desert.

Dried aligator lizard, California Legless Lizard (with and without skin),butterfly and dragon fly wings. All thanks to Cupcake the cat.

The Photography corner. Glass slide, stereoscope photos, tintype, civil war photo, an engraved photo block used to print photo in newspaper-1860's, an old camera with film (can't get it out) and a pocket size movable hootchy cootchy girl. She shimmies when you press the sides of the frame. Oh and my dad, striking a pose.

 

[Idledame]

to see the girl shimmy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJQVjsWYdHs

 

[Mysterious Mose]

Wow, that Shimmy girl's amazing! The story about the perpetual lightbulb, since 1901, in the Fire Station that was posted earlier on the Lounge was my rant of last week to my long suffering non-vintage friends and colleagues.

 

[Creeping Past]

What particularly interests me is Victorian Wunderkammern or "curiosity cabinets/curiosity rooms" where people displayed their strangest artifacts, both natural (e.g. coral, shells, human skulls, preserved insects) and man-made (e.g. strange brass instruments, primitive art, ancient mandolins).

Yes, me too. I like that the people with such collections were conscious of their lineage as archivists of this culture of the obscure, hidden and otherwise lost, and often regarded themselves as linked with an antiquarian tradition reaching back to the Renaissance. I like the fact that these collections serve as mnemonics for both personal and wider cultural experience.

In this vein, my favourite spots are Sir John Soanes' house and the library of Felbrigg Hall (although not strictly a wunderkammer, it retains a dense atmosphere of intense antiquarian study), which M R James surely must have visited at some point.

 

[Dr Doran]

Very nice, Idledame!

I have not yet been to the Museum of Jurassic Technology in L.A. It is a Wunderkammer. Not extremely Victorian, though.

 

[Idledame]

I too have meant to go there. Maybe the next time you're in town we can do a FL trip there.

 

[Story]

Purely for inspiration's sake, I'd recommend
http://www.collphyphil.org/MUTTER.ASP

 

[Dr Doran]

Story, that's very cool.

Pics coming VERY shortly of my newly-arranged cabinet (well, shelf) of curiosities.

 

[Dr Doran]

Not all Victorian. But a lot is, and some of what is not, generally fits in with the Victorian Wunderkammer-aesthetic.

Top: lantern of uncertain provenance. Victorian era bird-shaped water vase. hideous African mother-idol. "The Psychology of Love and Hate." one of the Leo Markun booklets that was big in the 1930s in his weird series. Very old mirror quite similar to ones in a LOT of the Wunderkammern photographed in books like Cabinets of Curiosities by Mauries. Very old-looking pot I bought in Jerusalem. Art piece by Lily Prillinger: "Not just a kiln but a girl whose voluptuous body was his Kiln with Features." Lily is a cop in SF now.
Second row: hideous doll in front of two modern Tarot decks. Jar of absinthe from Fern Rock. Jar of liqueur from wedding of friends. Head of Artemis. Empty jar for tarantula skin or something. White ceramic hand from my sculpture phase. Box of ashes of Pani Mirka, a family friend of my wife.
Third row: 1930s heat massager. Another booklet from the Leo Markun series. Bracelet. Old shoe thing.
Fourth row: tiny rocking chair that a bum made from a Coke can. Copy of Neo-Hittite relief of two griffins holding up the sky which I acquired in Turkey. Cleopatra paperweight my Dad bought in Egypt with marble base. Framed photo of Zubelda cigarette sign painted on exterior wall of Tenderloin building in SF. Moorish tea service, metal. Crucifix with eye in middle. Weird little doll. Red-framed Frieda Kahlo print. Hanging pendant containing bug. Pinkish face is repro of Greek ceramic theater ticket.
Fifth row: Glass bottle whose label reads "Cheater's Hand. Tequila preserved" containing rubber hand. Seltzer bottle (no idea why I have it). Blackish motor part. Old globe. Hideous bird-god that my friend made. Brown hand with unglazed stripes on back of hand from my sculpture phase. Statue of the Anatolian Artemis of Ephesus. Plant in bottle.
Very bottom, atop white secretary desk: silver chalices and silver pitcher of dried flowers.

 

[Story]

Kuntz-Kamera Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.
Not for the faint of heart
http://www.englishrussia.com/?p=1036

 

[Dr Doran]

Kuntz-Kamera Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.
Not for the faint of heart
http://www.englishrussia.com/?p=1036

Utterly amazing. Thanks.