Author Archives: Chelsea Nichols
Vintage ophthalmology signs
I love this 1962 photograph by Chinese photographer Wang Shuangquan 王双全 (1920-1978). It depicts the beautiful and bizarre eyeball signs that surround the entrance to an ophthalmology clinic in Tainan City, Taiwan. Isn’t there something weirdly flirty about those hand-painted eyes trying to lure in new customers? I think the jumble of eyes also makes the building look a bit monstrous, like a creature staring off in different directions. Can you imagine walking by this shop everyday and feeling all […]
Categories: Curiosities, Strange Photographs, Unsettling Things • Tags: advertisements, eye, photography
A hand-some medieval bat
According to superstition, if you rub the blood of a bat on your face you’ll be able to see at night. But if you use this bat, you’ll also get more hand-some. Never too cool for a good pun. I love this quirky little bat with his many hands. It comes from The Art of Falconry (De Arte Venandi Cum Avibus), a Latin ornithology book originally published in 1241 by Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor from 1196-1250. More than […]
Categories: Curiosities, Historical Art • Tags: bat, humor, medieval, superstition
Sexy weasels in Renaissance art
Exploring the sexual symbolism hidden in paintings of weasels in Renaissance art
Categories: Curiosities, Historical Art • Tags: animals in art, ermine, fertility, flea-fur, jewels, paintings, pregnancy, renaissance, symbolism, weasel
How to scare children in the 1920s
A series of creepy 1920s photographs of goblin creatures snatching a little girl out of her bed
Categories: Curiosities, Unsettling Things • Tags: children, creepy, goblin, monsters, photography, stereoscope, unsettling
Wearing her own face
Chelsea Nichols explores just what is creepy about Gillian Wearing’s photograph of Lily Cole wearing a damaged mask of her own face.
Categories: Contemporary Art, Unsettling Things • Tags: doll, gillian wearing, haunting, lily cole, masks, models, photography, psychology, unsettling, victorian era
A saucy self-portrait from 1828
The story behind a saucy self-portrait from 1828 by Sarah Goodridge
Categories: Curiosities, Historical Art • Tags: 19th century, breasts, erotic, female artists, paintings, sex
Tony Fomison’s inner werewolf
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
Two-faced death ring
Categories: Curiosities, history, Museums • Tags: 17th century, death, face, gold, history, jewelry, memento mori, museum, ring, skull, unsettling
The Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things 