Friday, February 22, 2008

Melancholy
















These are a few examples of collections at Obsolete. These are part of the collections titled Melancholy. I love the saw fish bone on original Italian stand circa 1910-1920. The baboon is from a natural history museum in France circa 1960. The baby emu is displayed under a glass dome and is from a museum in Belgium, 1940-1950. The whale bone is so architectural and the coral branches exquisite. Taxidermy animals were quite the rage during the Victorian period and no home was complete with out a case of stuffed birds and examples of wildlife. Check out these and much more at Obsolete.

7 comments:

yellowdoggranny said...

dead stuffed animals freak me out..which is why i never liked audubon pictures of the birds..they were all killed and stuffed just for the book...eek!

Lady Lavona said...

We are twin souls you and me! I love Obsolete!!! I found them through one of my favorite assemblage artists, Ron Pippin. He combines two of my favorite things...old bones and medical antiques! Did you check out his work? All of the resident artists are amazing!

I would never buy fur/bones of anything killed recently...But I love antique taxidermy, and own a few pieces. Guilty pleasure.

High Desert Diva said...

Melancholy is a marvelous collection as is the rest of Arbus' site. Thanks for the link!

Christopher A. Klingler said...

Christie ~ Lovely artifacts and thanks SO much for sharing. I think the baby Emu is my favorite. ALL are fascinating...GREAT post!

PS: Pixie is SOOO cute!

PPS: Kimberlee will LOVE this when she sees it! '-)

Best,
Chris :)

Karen from A`Musements said...

Thanks for sharing this. I am excited to see the Arbus movie, just can't picture Nicole Kidman pulling it off.... but we'll see. Arbus seemed to me to be the photographic counterpart to Sylvia Plath's writing.
"....and I eat men like air."
Who could forget a line like that?!

High Desert Diva said...

Ok...seriously...I got back to the boar's head in Dec. and my whole computer froze up. Had to shut the whole thing down. I think it got scared to death!

Post me a link to the tumbleweed Christmas tree, would ya?

design dna said...

i have never heard of this! i have to look up obsolete. that emu is fantastic(est of all)! i am a big animal lover but i can not look away from beautiful specimens. i find them so fascinating. i recently found a photo of a dead hammerhead shark. he was upside down and his mouth was open. it looked like he was smiling with his eyes open on the side of his hammer. fascinating animal.