Bittersweet: The Bone Room

I had the most amazing time with a couple of my very

favorite people on Saturday. We planned a trip to Berkeley, CA

(about 1 1/2 hours away from Sacramento) to check out a scrapbook

store that my friends have been bragging about for years. 

"They carry Stampotique stamps" was pretty much all I needed to hear.

Since we were going to be in the city (San Francisco) it was suggested that

I make a list of places I wanted to check out as well. 

Our tastes tend to differ in places of interest.

I spent quite a bit of time on Yelp and read some rather disparaging

reviews of "Loved to Death", the curiosities shop spotlighted on the

Science channel's Oddities series. I loved the show, and always wanted to check it out,

but after reading that they had gaff taxidermy, mass produced trinkets 

scattered around their store, and shitty attitudes, I decided to skip it. 

But, in reading those reviews I was turned on to a place called,

  "The Bone Room", in Berkeley.

What a nugget of awesomeness. 

That is a skinned rooster on the top left, inside of the massive oyster shell.

They have such a varied array of natural history and science, from prosthetic eyes

to fetal pig specimens. Their wet specimens were on sale, but that is just not my

cuppa tea. Maybe because they all look so, dead. Makes me sad.

I was so busy shopping that I didn't take any more photos except for the ones of the

stuff I bought. Wanna see what I got?

I went on their site online the night before and did some pricing and window shopping

so I had an idea of what I wanted before I got there and became overwhelmed.

I'm glad I did that. There was so much awesomeness I could have spent

the entire day there. No joke.

Spider Webs Under Glass - These are real spider webs sprayed 

with a fine metallic coating, mounted on a black background, 

and protected by beveled glass. Each web includes a tag providing 

the genus and species of its maker, along with collection information 

and a picture of the species. Only the webs were collected 

for these works of art, the spiders themselves go on to build more webs. 

Cool, right? Mine was made by a Feather Foot spider.

It's about 3" round. 

This is a mouse skull pendant, complete with mandibles.

These are made exclusively by The Bone Room.

I originally wanted a bat skull pendant, but fell in love 

with this truly unique piece as soon as I saw it.

Got Bobcat claws? I do.

This little acrylic encased baby is my bat specimen.

I named him Bartok. 

Got some bad ass African porcupine quills.

And the quills look pretty cool in this little jar I picked

up at the Daiso store in Japantown, but that's another post.

Imagine my surprise when I happened upon these tiny,

headless porcelain dolls. I didn't expect to see jars of heads

and limbs either. What a find!

Also on my shopping list was a rattlesnake rattle, but when we

opened the case containing not only rattles, but striking heads too,

it smelled something awful! So awful in fact, that I opted to leave

without my rattle. Once I got home and recounted my trip to my husband,

and told him about the rattle snake stink, he went out in the garage and came

back with a rattlesnake rattle. Oh, how I love that man!

While we were waiting for The Bone Room to open, we popped

into a shop next door called, Therapy. 

I have been coveting this book for a while now, so I snagged it. 

At first, the book had me in stitches. The sheer ridiculousness of it all.

 

But then it just kinda got sad thinking of how disrespectful this type of 

crappy work is to the animal's spirit.

Yes, that is a Mallard head coming out of a lamb's ass.

I'm all for Rogue Taxidermy and gaff taxidermy, if done well.

The lamb is done well, despite the craziness of it, but that poor lion

and hyena... Pretty sad. I do like the book, though. Just didn't expect to feel

that way about it. 

Okay, now for the bittersweet part of my post. 

It seems that the owner of The Bone Room passed away very unexpectedly,

very recently. As of May 1st, they are closing this store front and going to

be selling online. At least their incredible treasures will still be available,

but it won't be the same as walking into that store and seeing everything

all at once. The staff were super sweet and helpful, too.

See? Bittersweet.  

Thanks for stopping by today.

I'll be back tomorrow with my Daiso haul, and my story about the

scrapbook shop that started our entire trip.