Looking at my list I'm surprised the curiosity cabinet wasn't added sooner. I love all things morbid and weird. When I was around six years old I begged my mom to take me to the cemetery in our town so that I could read all of the names and dates on the headstones. The propensity for creepiness hasn't waned as I've gotten older. If anything it's grown thanks to more awareness, and the internet. Back in 2008, and into the earliest part of 2009 the museum at FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology, where I went to school) hosted "Gothic: Dark Glamour", an exhibit dedicated to all things fashionably Gothic. It ranged from Victorian mourning attire, memento mori, the curiosity cabinet, up to Japanese Gothic Lolitas. It was awesome. If they had let me I probably would've made my home amongst all of the eerie loveliness, all while swishing around in Winona Ryder's red dress from the movie Dracula (yeah, it was there). I loooove Winona. I don't care what Johnny's tattoo says now. Winona Forever!
Sorry. Tangent. Anyways. Curiosity cabinet. I am so in love with the idea of having a designated place in your home for interesting things. Initially, like back in the 15th century, cabinets of curiosities were actual rooms and museum type places, but Victorians started implementing actual cabinets as furniture to showcase their findings. Findings ranged from taxidermic animals (another morbid obsession), mostly things pertaining to natural history, or just things of beauty. I think I might actually enjoy opening the doors to a curiosity cabinet more than the doors to my closet. Blasphemy coming from a fashion school graduate, I know. Oh well. I am nothing if not a rebel.
We are so inundated with imagery and information I think most of us take the wonderful things around us for granted. What a lovely idea to house some of them in a special place, just as a reminder that, yeah maybe you know what a Conch shell or taxidermy squirrel looks like, but aren't they still fucking cool? Because they are.
That is Bonnier de la Mosson's (18th C. French Aristocrat) Second Cabinet of Natural History. Trip to Paris: added to the list.
Moustachioed gentleman= Victorian taxidermist. I really just wanted to use the word "moustachioed".
In my first apartment there was a space in the wall where three shelves had been placed right off of the small entrance corridor. They were from about your waist in height from the floor and reached up a good three or four feet but had no real use for conventional things. There were no outlets near this space nor was there a rationale to store food items in a space that was not quite in the kitchen.
ReplyDeleteAfter living in the apartment for a couple of weeks I found myself tossing my keys on the bottom of the shelves so an ashtray was placed there to let me hear them hitting it as opposed to the floor. Soon, the ashtray became the receptacle for loose pocket change. But what of these other shelves?
The other two shelves pretty much became a constantly changing display of things I liked to look at before trekking off to work or returning home victorious from another day of corporate battle. Silly things like curios from giveaways, a Gumby figure, something representing Spider-Man or KISS and the list goes on.
When I moved into my new apartment this little section of shelves was one of the things that I missed most from the old one because it was just so unique. That building was much older than the one I went off to and I still sometimes wonder what purpose that space's intention was. I guess I will never know but it sure served me well for the seven years I was there. Sigh.