The Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things

Tony Fomison’s inner werewolf

8 November 2018 by Chelsea Nichols

Art and monsters are two of my all-time favorite things, so I’m in (weird, twisted) heaven when the two things combine. A strange, hairy beast lurks inside the soul of New Zealand artist Tony Fomison – head over to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa blog to read my full post about his remarkable paintings of hairy beasts. What does your inner monster look like? For New Zealand painter Tony Fomison (1939–1990) it was a creature drenched in darkness, […]

Categories: Contemporary Art, Curiosities • Tags: animal, art, curiosities, face, museum, new zealand, Tony Fomison, werewolf

17th century memento mori ring showing a skull

Two-faced death ring

19 August 2013 by Chelsea Nichols

Categories: Curiosities, history, Museums • Tags: 17th century, death, face, gold, history, jewelry, memento mori, museum, ring, skull, unsettling

Vintage photograph with head cut out in a heart shape

She lived inside someone’s locket

18 August 2013 by Chelsea Nichols

Categories: Curiosities, history • Tags: face, heart, love, nostalgia, photography, vintage

Tipu’s Tiger

23 July 2013 by Chelsea Nichols

Tipu’s (or Tippoo’s) Tiger is a life-sized wooden mechanical organ made around 1793, depicting a tiger mauling a man in European clothing. When the crank is turned, a hidden mechanism causes the man’s arm to goes up and down, and plays his wails of agony along the growls of the tiger. Under a flap on the tiger’s body there is also a small pipe organ, which can play 18 notes.

Categories: Curiosities, history, Museums • Tags: animal, art, automaton, colonialism, figurine, grotesque, history, india, music, sculpture, tiger

Photograph of a preserved circular loaf of bread discovered at Pompeii

Preserved bread from Pompeii

22 July 2013 by Chelsea Nichols

This is the ultimate piece of toast: a loaf of bread made in the first century AD, which was discovered at Pompeii, preserved for centuries in the volcanic ashes of Mount Vesuvius.

Categories: Curiosities, history • Tags: archaeology, bread, history, pompeii, preserved, toast

1893 mug shot of two year old Francois Bertillon

Adorable toddler mug shot

21 July 2013 by Chelsea Nichols

Alphonse Bertillon was a French police officer and biometrics researcher who was responsible for standardizing the modern mug shot. (Fun fact: the profile shot was included because Bertillon thought our ear shape might become a unique identifier, in the days before fingerprinting). This freaking adorable mug shot features his two-year old son François Bertillon, a hardened criminal who was caught nibbling all the pears from a basket on 17 October 1893.

Categories: Curiosities, history • Tags: children, criminal, cute, face, humor, images, mug shot, photography, victorian era

Illustration of a cat organ from La Nature, 1883

Katzenklavier: The Cat-Piano

12 February 2013 by Chelsea Nichols

When I was a kid, my weird and wonderful mother used to amuse us by picking up the cat and pretending to play it like a bagpipe, using its tail as a mouthpiece. Her improvised feline instrument has, sadly, been upstaged by my discovery of the Katzenklavier, a Cat-Piano (also known as a cat organ) dreamed up in the 16th century.

Categories: Curiosities, history, Ideas • Tags: animal, cat, curiosities, history, instrument, music, piano, psychiatry, unsettling