sculpture | The Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things

The pelvises of Christine Borland

13 January 2022 by Chelsea Nichols

Christine Borland’s ‘Set Conversation Pieces’ (1998) combine obstetric pelvises with 18th century English china.

Categories: Contemporary Art, Curiosities • Tags: body, medicine, porcelain, sculpture

Folk art carving of an exorcism

9 January 2022 by Chelsea Nichols

Folk art carving of the exorcism of a small child

Categories: Curiosities, Historical Art • Tags: curiosities, demons, exorcism, outsider art, sculpture

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 six wax figures and broken body parts damaged from fire.

Wax figures after the fire

27 November 2012 by Chelsea Nichols

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

Half of a taxidermy lion with gold dripping from it.

Opulent taxidermy made by Idiots

26 November 2012 by Chelsea Nichols

The Idiots are an artistic collective made up of Afke Golsteijn and Floris Bakker. They describe their work as “characterized by the use of animal material exquisitely sculpted into natural positions and combined seamlessly with rich materials such as embroidery and pearls.” Their work plays with all sorts of quirky taxidermy, such as the exposed fox spine of Thanatos and Hypnos (2011), the parrot headphones of Head Phones (Stilte!) (2009), or the slick oil drop bird in Oilbird (2008). However, I […]

Categories: Contemporary Art, Curiosities • Tags: animal, art, bird, curiosities, jewels, lion, sculpture, taxidermy, unsettling

19th century papier-mâché insects

13 November 2012 by Chelsea Nichols

These wonderful papier-mâché anatomical models of bees were made around 1875 by Dr. Louis Thomas Jerôme Auzoux (1797-1880). As a medical student in France in the early nineteenth-century, Auzoux was frustrated by the lack of real cadavers and the expense and delicacy of wax models to study anatomy. After his graduation from medical school in 1818, the young doctor began experimenting with the creation of anatomical models, inspired by a visit to the papier-mâché workshop of Jean Francois Ameline in […]

Categories: Curiosities, history • Tags: anatomy, bee, insect, papier-mâché, science, sculpture, victorian era

World War Two parachute crash test dummy.

WWII Parachute Crash Test Dummies

1 November 2012 by Chelsea Nichols

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