Shells for my Kunstkammer…. or Exotic Shells, and lots of them
A couple of weekends ago Tim and I stumbled upon the Antiques Show Place which is worth checking out. With 135 dealers, there is a decent variety and it makes a nice air-conditioned escape from the open air flea markets in the area. Of particular note was Frankly Scarlet… a fabulous, funky shop specializing in shells and other natural wonders. We had a nice chat with the owner Becky who just moved to NY this spring. It all reminded me of the Kunstkammer or collector’s cabinet. As the Met’s website says “ Collecting the extraordinary and mysterious had been part of human evolution since time immeasurable.” I purchased some mini starfish to start my own Kunstkammer.
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September 13th, 2007 08:24
That place looks great!
September 19th, 2007 04:49
Love the miniature starfish - so sweet! Good choice
September 25th, 2007 21:20
I love the word Kunstkammer- It reminds me of the treasure chests we had in Vermont. I remember the first time I was introduced to the idea by my friend, Rachel. She was a student at MIT with me and a former architecture student was letting her house sit for the summer. His house turned out to be the most amazing structure build onto an alley in Beacon Hill in Boston. Each floor was one room and there were 5 “floors” of about 10 by 8 feet. In one of the rooms there was a glass display case about 2′x 3′ with two shelves and on the shelves were found objects of design interest. For example, there was a particularly elegant screw, a beautiful old glass telephone dome from on top of a telephone pole, a shell, a porcelain door knob, a lovely old brass pull, a sink stopper etc etc. I was a magical place and I cherish the memory of it. The house it was semi attached to was sold a few years later and they tore ‘the barnacle house’ down to put in a fancy addition. But it lives on in my memory and in the treasure chests we have created in our lives.
September 25th, 2007 21:40
this is a slightly better version:
I love the word Kunstkammer- It reminds me of the treasure chests we had in Vermont. I remember the first time I was introduced to the idea of a treasure chest by my friend, Rachel. She was a student at MIT with me. The summer we were working on a film together she was house sitting for another architecture student whose “house†turned out to be the most amazing structure build onto a 30 foot wall in an alley in Beacon Hill in Boston. Each floor was one room and there were 5 “floors” of about 10 by 8 feet each and the stairs to the next floor took up a third of each room. The bathroom was on the ground floor and the kitchen was above it. Then came the living room and above that and the study. The top floor was the bedroom which was a loft bed with a sky light. In one of the rooms there was a glass display case about 2′x 3′ with two shelves and on the shelves were various objects of design interest that the builder of the house had found. For example, there was a particularly elegant screw, a beautiful old glass telephone dome from on top of a telephone pole, a shell, a porcelain door knob, a lovely old brass pull, a sink stopper etc. I was a magical place and I cherish the memory of it. The house it was attached to was sold a few years later and they tore ‘the barnacle house’ down to put on a fancy addition. But it lives on in my memory and in the treasure chests we have filled with our own special ‘finds’.