Skulls.Bones.Weird
Cabinet of Curiosities Now Open!

Some of my favorite things to look at when I go to someone’s house are the little trinkets they deem worthy of placing on tables, shelves or mantlepieces. I especially like said trinkets when they are weird antiques, bones, teeth, feathers, bottles, jars, skulls, taxidermy, pickled parts or doll parts. The best way to display such things is obviously in a fucking amazing cabinet, thus creating a cabinet of curiosities. Today I wanted to compile some of the beautiful specimens of tribute to the Victorian era in a massive gallery of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Some are small and others are huge, but they all catch my eye in their careful, chaotic arrangement of curious items. In my researching for this post, I found people who dedicate their lives and livelihoods to creating these cabinets and the specimens that can be placed in them, and I have a feature or two in the works on them. However, I think that the act of collecting is just as pleasurable as displaying one’s collection. One of my life’s goals is to acquire my late grandparents’ china cabinet (from my sister…delicate negotiations) and fill it with whatever I can scavenge on my life’s travels, so that when people come over they can spend minutes or hours peering at weird things. After the jump, check out a gallery of inspiring takes on the cabinet of curiosities…