The pelvises of Christine Borland
Christine Borland’s ‘Set Conversation Pieces’ (1998) combine obstetric pelvises with 18th century English china.
Categories: Contemporary Art, Curiosities • Tags: body, medicine, porcelain, sculpture
Tag: body
Rare eight-legged doll
This very rare doll from the early nineteenth century demonstrates a very innovative design for its day: a wheel of legs which allow the doll to ‘walk’ when it is pushed across the floor. The doll would have originally been costumed in a long dress to hide the leg mechanism, so only two walking feet would have shown at a time. The value of this remarkable hand-carved doll, with its enamel eyes, coiled chignon, jointed arms and delicately painted features, […]
Categories: history, Ideas • Tags: 19th century, body, doll, figurine, history, rare, toy, walking
Bizarre beauty contests
Categories: Curiosities, history • Tags: beauty, beauty pageant, body, contest, face, photography, unsettling, vintage
Wax figures after the fire
I’m so unsettled and captivated by this incredible photograph of wax figures burnt and melted after the massive 1925 fire that destroyed Madame Tussauds wax museum in London. I think wax models alone are already pretty creepy, but I don’t think even the Chamber of Horrors can touch the pathos of this unintentionally gruesome scene. With missing heads and appendages, charred skin and clothing in disarray, the uncanny wax models truly look like the causalities of some great trauma. I’ve […]
Categories: Curiosities, history, Museums • Tags: body, figurine, museum, sculpture, unsettling, wax
Morbid kidswear ads
If you haven’t already seen it, I strongly suggest you read about the fascinating Hidden Mothers phenomena in Victorian photography, and its possible relationship to the tradition of post-mortem photography. Amsterdam-based fashion photographers/artists Anuschka Blommers and Niels Schumm have put a morbid contemporary twist on the history of this imagery, recycling the aesthetic conventions of hidden mother and post-mortem photography into a commercial kid’s wear fashion shoot. In the first part of Blommers and Schumm’s ‘Kidswear’ series, an anonymous figure […]
Categories: Contemporary Art, history • Tags: art, body, children, face, hidden mothers, photography, unsettling, victorian era
WWII Parachute Crash Test Dummies
I know very little about these wonderful objects, but Obsolete, a combination antiques shop and contemporary art gallery in Venice, California, claims that they are World War Two parachute crash test dummies. The images are taken from Obsolete’s Facebook page, where it also says each dummy weighs up to 225lbs. I’d love to know more about these splendid models and their history, but information is surprisingly scarce. Here is a great history of the parachute, for example, but there is […]
Categories: Curiosities, history • Tags: body, crash test dummies, history, parachute, sculpture, WWII
James Lomax’s inflatable skins
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the preserved skins of exotic animals from faraway lands were brought back to Europe by explorers. The hides would be handed over to taxidermists whose job it was to prepare them for display by stuffing the skins and giving them a life-like appearance. However, the taxidermists often just had to guess at the shape and appearance of these unfamiliar animals based on crude sketches and descriptions, resulting in grotesque physical distortions which would […]
Categories: Contemporary Art • Tags: art, body, grotesque, inflatable, installation, sculpture, taxidermy, unsettling
Irina Werning: Back to the Future
Categories: Contemporary Art, Ideas • Tags: art, body, children, history, images, nostalgia, photography, time
The Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things 