I am embracing Christmas at this stage – but everywhere I look – I am curio-struck, SO I couldn’t resist…
Clockwise-ish from top left:
House of Hackney tray for Christmas drinks, features woodland animals engaged in cultural activities, very curio.
Skull Plate from Wolf and Badger, not my idea of festive Christmas nibbles, but undeniably curio.
Alex Randall has a range of ‘animal’ lighting, dare you?
Albertus Seba‘s book looks fab in Steven Gambrel’s ‘curiousity cabinet’ powder room (see ‘Baroque‘ post). Just in case you missed it, here it is again, I love it:
Calling out for a Little DIY project to cheer up a cloakroom pre-Christmas or beyond?
Rory Debner is stylish, subversive and curio, as his ‘chameleon for C tile’ shows, of course he has the whole alphabet. The pop-up shop at Maison 24 New York projects the Debner-vibe..
If Alex Randall’s taxidermy is a bit much… what about a cockatoo-or-two? Rockett st George have some really some fun ones and tropical birds are, after all, curio-tastic.
Well I love a pair of antlers, so pile them up. This Antler Console looks super-chic chez country-pad and The Decorator Source has them in all shapes and sizes – fit for a Cotswold cottage to glam-castle.
Vintage style display cases are in fashion, the real deal with butterflies included (above) is 1st Dibs, naturally. I also like the repro ones below at Culture Label (whose website includes Wonder Land: a selection of fantasy finds… OOOH).
Minerals, corals, shells are all very curio-stlye, why not go mini and get a ‘charm’? I might – to remember my obsession, the one above is in amethyst at Anthropologie.
Finally what about a ‘micro-world’? it’s very ‘sur-real meets curio’ – to see the world in a grain of sand or in this case porcelain artifice. By Jasmin Rowlandson at Wolf and Badger. Can I have it on my dressing table?
This all got me thinking about ‘Curio-Everything’. The Whose-who and What’s-what of curio style.
Curio Fashion: Alexander McQueen’s tailored-world inspired by dark beauty and our inevitable demise, sadly all too prescient.
Curio-Mothership: Sorry Selfridges it’s still Libertys.
Celebrity Curios: Has to be Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Burton?
Curio Dining: Les Trois Garcons – right? Their entrance guarded by mythical creature and mascot.
Curio Designer- Oriel Harwood a contemporary artist whose work exudes Baroque sur-realism: page 1 of the google search brought up these Happy Candlesticks at ‘Virginia White’s Gallery’.
And I can’t resist this AD image from Galen Westen’s Palm Springs pad, where Oriel was commissioned for coral mirror and chandalier, saving it from sugar-overload.
Curio Antiques Dealer: Robert Barley has the extraordinary and wonderful from 2000 BC to 2012 AD including his own sur-real designs like ‘the Conchologist’ below, “inspired by antiquity & the Kunstkammer objects of the 16th & 17th centuries“.
Curio-Magazine. For me it’s the World of Interiors, maybe for others it’s Wunderkammer?
In fact could curio-on-and-on… SO
Curio Christmas - Anthropologie rocks it, and their ‘aqeous’ christmas decorations finally make sense to me – from Narwhals to Polpi. But having looked on line I really hope I get to gaze and wonder at their Christmas exhibition of Su Blackwell’s ‘Sleeping Beaauty’.
Curio-Obsession finally put to rest- I think I can let go and move on, but it makes me wonder…how bad is the Christmas obsession going to get? HO HO HO.
Images for product from relevant retailers.
Helena Shot at AP.
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