DAY FOURTEEN: THE STRANGEST SHOP IN PARIS

I could not help but pat him if I saw him...He ain't gonna bite..

Private party, and you're not invited.

Preserve your cherished pets? No thanks...

Forget skeletons in the closet, how about a boar in the den?

“la boutique la plus étrange de Paris”

Paris has many unusual shops, but one of the most unusual has to be Deyrolle, a 170-year old establishment on rue du Bac, not far from the Musee d'Orsay on the Left Bank.

To describe it as a taxidermy shop hardly does it justice. The ground floor looks like a fairly ordinary small home and garden shop (apart from a couple of stuffed gazelles standing on their hind legs and dressed to look like humans). But walking up the stairs is like passing through a time warp. The second story (which in France is considered the first) appears to have changed little since the store moved to its current location in 1881. It's dusty, chaotic, and crammed with stuffed animals of all shapes, sizes, and poses, as well as ancient wooden cases full of insects, shells, botanical prints and a variety of curiosities.

As the pictures here suggest, it's really a museum masquerading as a store.

DEYROLLE
46 RUE DU BAC
PARIS 75007

DAY THIRTEEN: UNE SEMAINE DE BONTE

Une Semaine De Bonte trans. A Week of Kindness.

These strange, but true images are of the very real surreal from a book by Max Ernst of the above title. The Figure of the male as bird is interesting and creepy in his anonymity. Not something I would like to wake up to. Their beady eyes and long beaks - too much! But they are lovely things to look at. Macabre.

Une semaine de bonté comprises 182 images created by cutting up and re-organizing illustrations from Victorian novels, encyclopedias, and other books. Ernst arranged the images to present a dark, surreal world. Most of the seven sections have a distinct theme that unites the images within. In Sunday the element is mud, and Ernst's example for this element is the Lion of BelfortThe element of the next section, consequently, this section features numerous characters with lion heads. Monday, is water, and all of the images show water, either in a natural setting, or flowing inside bedrooms, dining rooms, etc. Some of the characters are able to walk on water, while others drown. The element associated with Tuesday is fire, and so most of the images in this section feature dragons or fantastic lizards. The last of the large sections, Wednesday, contains numerous images of bird-men.

The element of Thursday, "blackness", has two examples instead of one. The first example, "a rooster's laughter", is illustrated with more images of bird-men. The second example, Easter Island is illustrated with images portraying characters with Maoi heads. Friday, the most abstract part of the entire book, contains various images that resist categorization. They include collages of human bones and plants, one of which was used for the cardboard slipcase that was meant to house all five volumes of Une semaine de bonté. The final section of the book, Saturday, contains 10 images. The element given is "the key to songs"; the images are once again uncategorizable. The section, and with it the book, ends with several images of falling women.

No full interpretation of Une semaine de bonté has ever been published. The book, like its predecessors, has been described as projecting "recurrent themes of sexuality, anti-clericalism and violence, by dislocating the visual significance of the source material to suggest what has been repressed."

EIGHT DAYS A WEEK

DAY TWELVE: DISCE MORI

The intrigue of taxidermy is explored through jewellery by artist Julia deVille. These beautiful pieces are inspired by Memento Mori jewellery of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries and Victorian Mourning jewellery. DeVille combines traditional gold and silversmithing with materials that were once living such as jet, human hair and taxidermy. They are reminder of our mortality. These pieces are bizarre, but have a strange sense of beauty. It goes back to the Freudian theory of fascination and repulsion - we are afraid to look but want to see more, finding it hard to take our eyes away from them. I want one. Taxidermy is a celebration of life, a preservation of something beautiful...

WANT MORE? FOLLOW THE WHITE RABBIT

DAY ELEVEN: MEMENTO MORI

BRIEF HISTORY OF MEMENTO MORI
AND VICTORIAN MOURNING JEWELLERY

"Throughout the ages coffins, skeletons, and death heads (skull and cross-bones) have been used to symbolise the imminence of death and our own mortality.

Within the fourteenth century came the Bubonic Plague, which swept out some twenty five million people, one third of Europe by the beginning of the sixteenth century. Death was very much a part of every day life. Prior to this Death had been represented as the devil, horned and cloven-hoofed, forcing the sinful into the the mouth of hell. Between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Death began to take on a more familiar and human form, the skeleton, which was soon to appear in jewellery.

First rings were made with inscriptions such as; 'C'est mon ure' (my hour has come) and ESPOIRIER DE MY SANS FYNE (Pray for me always), to remind the wearer of the approach of death and the need to prepare for it. "

WANT TO READ MORE? CLICK HERE FOR DISCE MORI

DAY TEN: WALKING A LOBSTER

[DECADENCE IS...]

hothouse flowers natural silk suit dyed hair sex with your spouse or lover painted lips streetlights walking a lobster a beautiful sunset an ornate china teapot wild flowers
velvet suit naturally red hair sex with a prostitute rosy lips moonlight walking a dog an opium absinthe hallucination an ornate china teapot that doesn't work

NEVER WALKED A LOBSTER BEFORE? THEY ARE QUITE AGREEABLE CREATURES TO WALK

DAY NINE: LOVED TO DEATH

These delightfully-creepy little things speak the ultimate dialogue between fashion and death. Who can resist the allure of taxidermy?
Not I!

Tiny little feet hold on to keyholes, wish bones, acorns.
Loved to death? Or love death? Fashion becomes death. Wear death as fashion.
They are so bizarre I almost want one, but the politics behind taxidermy, wearing fur, etc. - the animal conservation aficionados
out there will have my head! (Though the idea of that somehow ironic to the very nature of this post...)

These bizarre jewelery creations by Loved To Death are made using the preserved body parts of dead animals. According to the creator, all animal parts used to create these pieces have been professionally preserved and come from recycled sources. No animals are killed specifically to make this jewelery.

FOLLOW FASHION TO FIND DEATH