#wunderkammer

[kaijutegu]

Finally got my @shadyufo TEETH plaque up. It's one of the first things anyone sees when they come into my home, which I think is very important, because it tells you exactly what you're getting into.

[contremineur]

Ilona Langbroek, Wunderkammer 2 (2022)

"I create my images based upon stories and memories, in which I try to visualize the bond between man, spirit and nature. I love to use the contrast between light and dark and the twilight zone between them."

image and artist's statement from here

[thevisualvamp]

The shell game

[fashionbooksmilano]

Collezioni Straordinarie

Marin Montagut

L'ippocampo Edizioni, Milano 2023, 240 pagine, 21x28,5 cm, Cartonato con sovraccoperta, ISBN 9788867228461

euro 29,90

email if you want to buy booksinprogressmilano@yahoo.it

Nei suoi viaggi, Marin Montagut ha incontrato celebri antiquari e semplici appassionati che lo hanno sedotto con collezioni d’ogni genere, disseminate per la Francia, da Avignone a Parigi. Il suo nuovo libro è un tour attraverso queste insolite raccolte, fra pareti fitte di dipinti e antichi ex voto, spazi gremiti di canestri e ceste in vimini, caraffe ottomane e obelischi in pietra dura, madonne policrome e cagnolini bobblehead… Un percorso straordinario in dieci tappe, dove migliaia di oggetti creano moderne, fantasmagoriche Wunderkammer, fra bellezza, bizzarria e fanciullesca curiosità. Marin Montagut è un illustratore e designer francese. Con il marchio omonimo, crea oggetti decorativi per la sua boutique parigina. È autore di Sotto i tetti di Parigi (con Ines de la Fressange; L’ippocampo, 2018) e di Ricordi di Parigi. Botteghe e atelier di una volta (L’ippocampo, 2021). Ha collaborato con prestigiosi marchi francesi, fra i quali il Café de Flore, la Comédie-Française, lo Château de Versailles e il Ritz di Parigi.

02/11/23

[pseudospectre]

Finally set up one of my oddity shelves

[ouroborostaxidermy]

Shop Update: Check out this wonderful little batch of Chicks, All of these chicks are handmade by myself in the United States, and they come in an assortment of varieties, you can check these out and plenty more right here

(Oh and for those of you who Celebrate Easter and want to get an early start, these make significantly better gifts for most people than your living alternative. Live chickens take daily maintenance, and not everyone is zoned for them, taxidermy chickens you just need to dust off every once and a while and are polite to exist harmoniously even the most thin walled of apartments)

[earthjournalbyawildrose]

my māgick .:. @earthjournalbyawildrose

source

[bidonica]

Art in HotD - 1x05 “We Light The Way”

(more art in Westeros) - (more art in HotD)

(Make sure to click through, these images are BIG)

There’s no doubt about what makes the meaty part of this episode: Corlys’ art collection. But first, a good panoramic look at High Tide:

Hard not think of Mont Saint-Michel. Does this make the Stormlands Fantasy Normandy? Maybe, if maritime pines grew there. On the other hand in this very episode Larys explained to us that “natural habitat” is an elastic concept on Planetos (which honestly? is consistent with the magical seasons). ETA: The actual filming location is indeed St. Michael’s Mount in Cornwall, historically hosting an abbey founded by benedictine monks coming from… Mont Saint-Michel. (Thanks to Ashaya of History of Westeros and @salty-wench for pointing this out to me!)

But it’s the inside that’s the real treat. We saw a glimpse of it in episode 2, when Corlys and Daemon join forces to fight at the Stepstones.

That bronze head covered in coral and sediments makes a clear connection between the Velaryons and the sea they tied their house’s heritage to. Same for what looks like the skull of a deep sea fish on his desk. But they are also bizarre and unique items; let’s put a pin on that.

The great hall in High Tide gives the impression of being spacious and airy, despite being full of items collected by Corlys in his travels. The architecture is very spartan, with some painted decoration on the window arches, that together with the teal walls prevent the room from feeling too austere. I’m also a bit at loss with the diamond texture on the pillar capitals; they don’t really look like any historical style I can think of, though the diamonds have been used in the renaissance for civilian as well as military architecture, just not on capitals.

A good look at the Driftwood Throne; a piece of lore that wasn’t mentioned in the episode was that it was gifted to the Velaryons by the mythical sea deity the Merlin King. It would be interesting to know whether it was the Velaryons who decorated the wood with their heraldic seahorse or if the story goes the other way around - they adopted the seahorse because it was already there? I am leaning towards the former.

On the bottom left you can also see a mid sized statue of what looks like an Asian warrior, reminiscent of both the terracotta soldiers and of traditional Mongolian iconography. Does this represent an inhabitant of Yi Ti?

Another statement piece besides the throne is the model of the castle on the left side of the room:

Not gonna lie, during my first viewing I took note of it and I assumed it was a model of High Tide itself, but the actual castle is much smaller. The architecture is also distinctly different from the one in Viserys’ model of Valyria, so it isn’t a representation of the Velaryons’ ancestral land. A possibility is that it is actually Driftmark, so Corlys is watching over both his castles at the same time - and most of all, he is displaying them both. It’s important to note that unlike Viserys’ miniature, this model is meant to be seen by whoever is coming to meet the Lord of the Tides. However, this doesn’t really match the description of Driftmark as dark and cramped, so I’m making a wild guess and saying it is actually a project for the future expansion of High Tide, as the architectural style seems to match, as well as the hilltop silhouette. The model also seems to be made of wood, which was the preferred material for this kind of item back before modern lightweight alternatives and 3D renderings. Note also the statues holding the table, an iconography with its roots in antiquity and that took hold again during the Renaissance before taking a decidedly racist turn shortly after (a huge number of architectural elements but also furniture etc. especially from the 17th and 18th century depict black men in that position, often with exaggerated, grotesque features).

It wouldn't surprise me if the big seashell near the throne was custom made for High Tide especially because of the impeccable color coordination, but I'm not so sure. Something that definitely was commissioned is the huge fresco depicting a ship behind the staircase (why oh why is it behind a staircase??? Corlys you didn't think *this* through). The figurehead represents the titular Sea Snake Corlys' ship gets her name from, preceded by dolphins (both in classical and Medieval/Renaissance iconography a symbol of good fortune for seafarers, and also of speed and intelligence) and it is also going in the direction of the sun, which is interesting in the context of this quote from Fire & Blood:

As for Lady Alys Westhill, born Elissa of House Farman, where her adventure ended we cannot say. The Sun Chaser vanished into the west, still searching for the lands beyond the Sunset Sea, and was never seen again.

Except…

Many years later, Corlys Velaryon, the boy born on Driftmark in 53 AC, would take his ship the Sea Snake on nine great voyages, sailing farther than any man of Westeros had ever sailed before. On the first of those voyages, he sailed beyond the Jade Gates, to Yi Ti and the isle of Leng, and returned with such a wealth of spice and silk and jade that House Velaryon became, for a time, the wealthiest house in all the Seven Kingdoms. On his second voyage, Ser Corlys sailed even farther east, and became the first Westerosi ever to reach Asshai-by-the-Shadow, the bleak black city of the shadowbinders at the edge of the world. There he lost his love and half his crew, if the tales be true…and there as well, in Asshai’s harbor, he glimpsed an old and much weathered ship that he would swear forevermore could only have been Sun Chaser.

Is this fresco both a celebration of Corlys' famous voyages and a declaration of intent - that someday he, or another Velaryon, will go "west of Westeros" the way the legend says Elissa Farman did? Either way, it's as much of a statement piece as the storytelling columns in the Great Hall in King's Landing, except less martial and more aspirational. You can glimpse a bit more of the fresco in some pre release featurette from HBO that I didn’t have the time to track down, which shows the ship is also accompanied by actual sea snakes, and that the painting overlooks what’s basically an altar with the skulls of the Velaryon ancestors wearing oblong helms, clearly representing the ground (well, technically the sea) upon which the house stands.

>

House Velaryon as envisioned by Corlys, however, doesn’t dwell on the past; it  is projected towards growth and discovery. There seem to be also some little monochrome scenes in the circles painted into the framing of the bigger fresco, but not even high res production stills are able to show what exactly they are depicting.

On to items that have been collected rather than commissioned: lots of sea and horse imagery, but no straight up seahorse save for one where the peculiar bend of the tail makes me suspect it had a functional purpose, possibly as an oarlock. There are also items that do not relate directly to the Velaryon heraldry, like that stone element hanging from the ceiling that reminds me of the steeples of Khmer temples like the ones in Angkor, Cambodia. Or what might look like an astronomical tool, relevant for a seafarer, but also interestingly held by serpents, which might indicate more obscure, occult uses (and as the quote above reminds us, Corlys allegedly sailed as far as Asshai). There's a random wooden statue representing a human figure, precious pottery, etc. There's also, notably, the Crabfeeder's mask, which makes me wonder how many of Corlys' treasures were bought or traded and how many are spoils of battle.

What these items make when grouped together isn't so much a museum or private art collection, as much as a Wunderkammer, or cabinet of wonders. It's important to note that in the eras HotD draws from - basically the late Middle Ages with some tentative leap towards the Renaissance - the notion of art and its value was different than it is now. The way we conceive of art today owes a lot to the Romantic movement and its idea of art as the expression of human emotion - and of individual human genius. Before that, with various degrees of nuance, art was mostly a means to an end, and the artist was generally seen as a glorified craftsman (sometimes craftswoman) whose intellectual and personal contribution began and ended at the formal, technical stage of execution (again: there was wiggle room for this, and increasingly heated debate on figurative artists’ intellectual worth, but I digress). Which is why the Wunderkammer often mixed what we now consider actual, reputable art (or archaeology) with things that were valued just because they were weird and unique, like stuffed exotic animals, weirdly shaped pearls or seashells and whatnot, complex machinery, biological specimens going from the bizarre to the macabre. Cabinets of wonders have often been the starting point for the construction of modern museums, but Westerosi culture is still very far away from conceptualizing museums or private art collections in the modern sense, however they have the right mindset to start building Wunderkammern.

In a way, Corlys is the closest thing Westeros has to a Renaissance prince right now, because he claims ancient nobility but he's also a self made man, whose influence relies on a wealth built on trade rather than on the ownership of land or natural resources. And, like a Renaissance prince, he has a keen understanding of the use of art and decor as a means to communicate what he and his family are, what they were and what they want to be.

I thought High Tide would take over all of this week's post BUT we have at least a couple of tidbits from the Red Keep. We get a nice look at Alicent's quarters, and while the walls are dominated by the usual dragon orgies, I spotted that little aedicule near the window. Unfortunately we can't see what it contains, but my money would be on some little painting or icon relating to the Seven, a little niche for Alicent's devotion amongst the aggressively pagan wall art. It would be in line with the thinly veiled Catholic references the Faith is built upon, as it's pretty common for Catholic devotional paintings or statues (especially of saints or the Virgin Mary) to be housed in aedicules. It's a small thing, but I'm very curious to see whether and where the production design slips Faith iconography in the background, as it seems to be one of the main divides between the Greens and the Blacks.

Also, peep the dolphin shaped table legs, a popular motif during the Renaissance in general but, besides the meanings we've seen in relation to Corlys, also traditionally associated with nobility and faithfulness, hence a fitting iconography for a queen consort.

Last but not least, this isn't artwork per se, but it's hard not to see a callback to Last Supper imagery when it comes to the high table at the wedding feast - but rather than Leonardo's famous painting I got reminded of a slightly older iconography which explicitly singled Judas out. Which isn't to say Daemon is literally the Judas in the scenario, especially if we take Rhaenyra as the "Jesus" of the scene - she even has a halo/crown created by the outline of the Iron Throne when she’s seated... - but he is definitely a disruptor. Though not as disruptive as Alicent, the real odd one out here, arriving late and dressed in green as she joins a table that's basically composed of the future Blacks. Ironically, from her point of view it's Rhaenyra who is the Judas in the picture.

(also high res production stills show us some more details about the reliefs on the Great hall columns - yeah that's indeed a Targaryen shield there in the upper right. Now, if only I could make out what's on the shield more to the left...)

[junk-box-curiosities]

Dark forest pendant

[chantellechapman]

This piece is called 'Wunderkammer'. It's an 18x24 oil painting on canvas, inspired by the ‘cabinets of curiosities’ that were popularly collected in centuries past. The work was done from life, featuring items from the collection of a friend (though, in real life, the fur was only a scrap of leopard print fabric). Aside from animals, one of my favorite things to paint is books, and there are times when it really shows, haha.

[cultofweirdthings]

The skull of the Two-Headed Boy of Bengal at the Hunterian Museum in London.

[thevisualvamp]

The shell game

[fashionbooksmilano]

Cabinets of Curiosities 40th Edition

Massimo Listri

a cura di Giulia Carciotto e Antonio Paolucci

Taschen, Cologne 2022, 448 pagine, 15.6 x 21.7 cm, ISBN 9783836593786, Edizione: Francese, Inglese, Tedesco

euro 25,00

email if you want to buy booksinprogressmilano@yahoo.it

La Wunderkammer, o "gabinetto delle curiosità", era un luogo in cui i collezionisti raccoglievano oggetti artistici, scientifici e intellettuali di ogni sorta, nell'ambizioso tentativo di riunire tutta la conoscenza umana in un'unica stanza. Dal granduca Francesco I de' Medici e dall'imperatore del Sacro romano impero Rodolfo II fino all'arciduca Ferdinando II d'Asburgo, molti aristocratici virtuosi hanno acquistato, selezionato ed esposto questi oggetti creando veri e propri cataloghi del mondo intero, che spaziavano tra architettura, arredamento, pittura, scultura, gemmologia, geologia, botanica, biologia e tassonomia, astrologia, alchimia, antropologia, etnografia e storia. Lasciatevi stupire da corni di unicorno (zanne di narvalo), gemme, rari coralli, vetri di Murano, affreschi e bizzarri automi meccanici. Scorrete le immagini di creature mitiche ed esotiche e scoprite i leggendari "avori di Coburgo", una straordinaria collezione di artefatti artigianali. Queste collezioni rappresentano un vero e proprio viaggio nel tempo, dal Rinascimento all'Età delle scoperte, dal Manierismo al Barocco, fino ai giorni nostri. Molte di queste Wunderkammer non esistono più, ma altre sono state minuziosamente ricostruite, mentre ne sono nate di nuove. Per realizzare una simile impresa titanica, Massimo Listri ha viaggiato attraverso sette paesi europei e svariate decadi; il risultato è una raccolta fotografica, accompagnata da un'introduzione autorevole e al tempo stesso accessibile e da un commento dettagliato su ciascuna delle 19 camere che mette in luce gli oggetti più straordinari di ogni collezione. Scoprite come questi tesori senza tempo siano stati in grado di forgiare e rappresentare la civiltà, il moderno concetto di museo e la nostra stessa conoscenza dell'universo.

15/07/23

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[pseudospectre]

Amazing incredible astounding stuff at the Chicago Oddities and Curiosities expo! The first pic is my personal purchases, there was so much I wanted but simply couldn't afford. So much taxidermy! Someday I want to splurge on a really fancy wet specimen for display, but for now I'm pretty happy with my little bottled octopus.

Post featuring: my buddy and her brand new stinky bison skull son that she got for her birthday:)

[charmingdisaster]

What’s in your cabinet of curiosities (and what glows under blacklight)? Here’s a selection of treasures from @sweetsoubrette’s collection, in natural light and under UV glow. #wunderkammer #curios #cabinetofcuriosities #oddities #blacklight https://www.instagram.com/p/Cn9-uEophUK/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[fire-and-bone]

BLACK FRIDAY SALE is now live! 💀 🎁

25% OFF orders $50+ w/ code SKULL25 30% OFF orders $100+ w/ code SKULL30 PLUS free shipping on ALL orders $75+, and a bunch of other stuff is on sale, and check out our newest collection, too! (Now - 11/30/22) www.fireandbone.com Tiny skull jewelry made from 3D scans of REAL animal skull specimens! Pendants, earrings, cufflinks, and more! Available in White Bronze, Yellow Bronze, and Sterling Silver.