Madame Talbot’s Victorian Lowbrow
(image: Madame Talbot’s Victorian Lowbrow on Myspace)
I was recently reminded of Madame Ashleigh Talbot’s stunning Victorian Lowbrow work while browsing Kirsten Anderson’s Right Some Good blog. Madame Talbot uses her substantial talent to make gorgeous framed curio exhibits, handmade books, hand-illustrated posters, mourning dolls, and more.
Madame Talbot’s creations are composed of items like vintage velvet, century-old paper, and bits of real bone, teeth, and hair. Although her primary implements are needle, thread, and her own hands, she counts among her tools a vintage typewriter from the early 1900s.
Her site and art celebrate:
Sideshows and the Elephant Man, Victorian era tattooed ladies, strange medical exhibits, dime museums and East End shows, the cult of death and the funeral rituals of the lower classes, pubs, bars and saloons, public executions, titillating scandals involving death and betrayal, morbid legends such as Jack the Ripper and Lizzie Borden, the penny dreadful, Victorian drugs such as Opium dens, Absinthe rituals & Wormwood deliriums, Morphine syringes sold to High Society women, Chloral Hydrate fiends, Laudanum addicts, Secret Hashish Societies, laughing gas parties, and patent medicines.
(image: Framed Witchcraft Curio Exhibit by Madame Talbot)
My favorite objects are the lovingly crafted pieces in the Curio Exhibits section, like the Civil War weeping bottles and the test tubes intended to hold the final dying breath of a loved one. The description that accompanies each curio exhibit is as delightful as the exhibit itself.
Madame Talbot also sells wonderful vintage items, like an engraved mausoleum key and mostly empty bottles of medicinals and poisons.
Many dozens of unique objects are available on Madame Talbot’s Victorian Lowbrow site and some of her less pricey work can be purchased in the Madame Talbot eBay Store.
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