Missed post

Hi all,

I've been sick this whole last week, so missed my usual Monday deadline. I'm working on a post that will come out on Friday...sorry!

Whilst on my deathbed, I received a most wonderful watch, though. I'll show you in the next post!

Beautiful Flotsam

I found Nader Hasan's art by complete accident, during one of my crazy search-threads on Google. Mr. Hasan, originally from Jordan and now living in Montreal, makes art out of found bits and pieces from anywhere he happens to find them.
“I am obsessed with small work,” he told the McGill Daily, a newspaper for McGill University. It is true: Mr. Hasan's work has the same kind of obsessive arrangement as some of the best Kunstkammern, or the Sedlec Ossuary (see below). Things that most people would walk right past are actually treasures which, when put in one of Mr. Hasan's arrangements, make you suddenly aware of their beauty.


What I love about this work is its attention to detail, the fearlessness of the presentation, and the eye Mr. Hasan has for how things will look together. Small things can so often be, simply, junk; yet even plastic daisies and old (but not antique) radio knobs are reborn in this new context; somehow the age of the materials (old enough to look old without being precious antiques) give these arrangements a mystique; we feel we are holding history in our hands, collected - though whose history is not clear.


I have, since childhood, been obsessed with things that carry mana, which in the Oceanic sense is "an impersonal force or quality that resides in people, animals, and inanimate objects and that instills in the appreciative observer a sense of respect or wonder." [wiki] In other words, for some objects a kind of life-magic clings to them or is infused into them. In some descriptions, mana can rub off of powerful people onto their objects, like pollen rubbing off on to a bee's legs - and if you are the possessor of an object with mana, your own mana increases as a result. In Hawaii, for example, contact with an object owned by the King was often powerful enough to kill a normal person. In my own childhood cosmology, which was built on hearsay, all objects had mana, and the amount varied depending on the object's history and usage. I was left with the feeling that if something had enough magic in it, it could become independent, moving around when I wasn't looking...

But that's another story.

In any case this is why I like Nader Hasan's work: he takes the small, tiny mana of everyday objects, and assembles them, gluing them together with his own artist's mana until they glow with their own kind of power. These small conglomerations of life-magic hold more than the sum of their parts, in every sense of the idea: they exert a sort of power over the senses, making us bend closer to see, making us want to keep one in our house in a shrine, making us wonder about the histories we are looking at - and, finally, making us wish, as always, that we could do that too.

Astrolabes, old and new

Detail of the earliest known Persian astrolabe, from the MHS in Oxford (see below)

I'm posting this early because I'll be traveling next week and don't know if I'll be able to access the Internet. Suffice to say, I'm thinking of indulging a lifelong fascination with astrolabes, buying one and (gasp) learning how to use it. I've always found them to be deeply mysterious and quite beautiful.

Astrolabes were first used in the Islamic world, starting around 700 AD. The Europeans didn't pick them up until about 1000 AD, and went on using them until the mid-17th century (they were used in Islamic areas until the mid-19th century, being available, traditional and quite accurate for voyages in smaller seas). They are generally made of brass or copper, sometimes with gilding. Curiously, manufacturers of brass astrolabes in 17th-century India were two centuries more advanced than their European peers (see this study).

Thanks to Brill publishers for the lovely photo

There is something marvelous about the idea that you can take a large medallion, hang it, sight the altitude of various heavenly bodies, and then know where on earth you are. It anchors one in the universe, and in such a beautiful, accurate, mathematical, and low-tech way.

While looking at all the wonderful pictures of astrolabes I found (and by the way, the Museum of the History of Science at Oxford University, which looks like an amazing resource for Cabinet materials, has a whole bundle of astrolabes for your perusal) I came across Max Chen, whose oilycog site is full of flash things he's made out of bicycle parts and other bits. Among other steampunk-related items (including a very bike-messenger version of an orrery) I found this astrolabe, which I think is really wonderful.





The front side has a map of San Francisco, but only the bicycle lanes are shown (no Bay Bridge crossing). The rete rotates freely, and on the perimeter is a little prayer, which reads: "Oh great god of all bicycles,/Grant me safe passage,/Through the cars that kill, potholes that maim,/And glass that deflates my tires and my spirits."

Even though it doesn't exactly orient one toward the stars, it is a sort of microcosmic astrolabe, orienting the user to his or her small world of the City as seen from the Heavens. It carries the same sort of mystique that many of the ancient astrolabes probably had for their owners.




If you're feeling in a DIY mood, I highly recommend the book Latitude Hooks and Azimuth Rings: How to Build and Use 18 Traditional Navigational Tools, by Dennis Fisher. This book has excellent explanations and diagrams, and from it you can learn to make astrolabes, quadrants, seagoing sundials, latitude hooks (which are Pacific Islanders' way of finding latitude), and nocturnals (star clocks), among other things. It really is a treasure trove of wonderful instruments that people have used for hundreds of years - and sometimes millenia.

Lastly, here are some other purveyors of more traditional newly-minted astrolabes, in case you are interested in owning one:

- Jim Fanjoy makes a nice copper medieval-style astrolabe, based on the descriptions by Chaucer and others.
- The Brass Compass makes four models of brass astrolabe, including a desk model, for a reasonable price.
- Brian Greig, in Australia, makes hand-made replica astrolabes.

The Zymoglypic Museum (and other things)

If you haven't looked at the Zymoglyphic Museum yet, you should have a look. Among other things, there is an online exhibit of "Photographers of the Marvelous", where I found this lovely photo created by Alessandro Bavari.



The Zymoglyphic Museum also has an exhibit of Frederick Ruysch's 18th century anatomical dioramas, which were "assembled from body parts and starring melodramatic fetal skeletons," according to the ZM. They were then turned into meticulous engravings by Cornelius Huybert. I will be doing a post about Frederick Ruysch and his relationship with Peter the Great later, so check in for that.



They also have an enigmatic little exhibit called "Age of Wonder", which includes a number of quite fun Wonders, including the Self-Destroying Automaton:
"This particular mechanical wonder was a clockwork automaton that not only told time but continuously removed pieces of itself an offered them to passers by. How the internal parts were regenerated has yet to be determined despite intensive investigation by the museum staff."
Besides this whimsical creation, there are a number of quite nice little cabinets and displays, such as the Small Cabinet below.


On another note, if you are interested in anatomy drawings, I would recommend looking at the the U.S. National Library of Medicine's Dream Anatomy exhibit, which is full of interesting images.

Awe-Inspiring Ossuaries

One of my greatest loves in life is when people take what is at hand and make art out of it, particularly a collecting kind of art, like the Wunderkammern. One of the most lovely examples of this is in certain ossuaries, where the gruesome symbols of mortality - human bones - have been elevated to a state of grace through artful arrangement.

Two of the best examples of these are the ossuary at Sedlec, in the Czech Republic, and the Capuchin Crypt, under Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini, a church in Rome.

The Capuchin Crypt holds the bones of over 4,000 Capuchin monks, and holds six rooms' worth of intricately stacked and hung bones:


But my favorite is the ossuary at Sedlec, which has an interesting story you can read here [wiki], and which is all the work of one man, a master woodworker, who was told to "put the bones in order". Sedlec holds the remains of many thousands of people over more than seven centuries' worth of burial. It is mind-boggling, and very beautiful:


(Thanks to Jairo Frisco Arenas Ramirez for the Sedlec pics)

Notice the bones stacked behind the coat of arms. It's quite incredible. I can only imagine that, after working with his new materials for awhile, the master woodworker ceased to see the bones as macabre and began to see their sculptural potential instead.

Not all ossuaries are rooms full of beautifully-crafted bone sculptures. Sometimes they are simply a chest full of bones, or a place where bones are deposited. I suppose the Catacombs in Paris could be classified as an ossuary, technically. Wikipedia describes an ossuary as "a chest, building, well, or site made to serve as the final resting place of human skeletal remains."

One of the most awe-inspiring -through sheer numbers - is the ossuary at Douaumont, in France, where the bones of those killed at the horrific 1916 Battle of Verdun are kept. The bones of more than 130,000 unidentified French and German soldiers are on display in small, windowed alcoves all around the outside of a, well, very large memorial building. Douaumont is not nearly as artistic, but it is a grim and remarkable testament to the horrors of war, especially one where the technology has outstripped the strategy of its leaders:


Beside this, Sedlec and the Capuchin Crypt, both of whom took centuries to collect their contents, look positively peaceful and merry.

Become a Mummy

This just in: you too can be mummified. That's right, Summum, a religious nonprofit organization in Utah, practices "the rites of Modern Mummification and Transference."

Since the rest of the world is so interested, Summum offers this service to all. Simply inform your local funeral director, and viola! You can have a regular casket, or Summum's artists will take a death-mask and create a hand-made mummiform [outer shell] to fit your exact form, either in the Egyptian style or whatever asthetic or religious style you prefer.

You can also have your pet mummified and encased in bronze or other materials, for the modest fee of "$6,000 to over $128,000 depending on the size of the animal and the type of mummiform you choose." The technique is time-consuming and the materials are expensive, so be prepared.

Another wonder for the Cabinet!

Real Fairies

Here’s an item for the Cabinet, sent to me by Tinkergirl over at Brass Goggles: a mummified fairy has been found in the countryside near Derbyshire, UK. The fairy, delicate and clearly well-preserved, was one of several found when a crack opened in the side of a barrow (burial mound). It is exquisite, with skeletal wings, and immensely detailed: eyebrows and fingernails are still intact. The barrow where it was found appeared to contain more than twenty bodies.

The article says:
”The 8-inch remains, complete with wings, skin, teeth, and flowing red hair have been examined by anthropologists and forensic experts who can confirm that the body is genuine. X-rays of the ‘fairy reveal an anatomically identical skeleton to that of a child. The bones, however, are hollow like those of a bird, making them particularly light.”

Wow! Such an important discovery has not been made since the ground-breaking Piltdown Man, and can be compared with the surprising and pivotal Archeoraptor, as well as the discoveries of Reiner Protsch and Shinichi Fujimura.