Spookdaddy
Cuckoo
- Joined
- May 24, 2006
- Messages
- 7,579
- Location
- Midwich
I thought we already had a doll thread somewhere - in the same kind of vein as the, Clowns – evil or funny? thread. (I did look - didn’t want Rynner getting testy with me.)
The weekend before last I spent a few days with my Spanish partner in London, during which time we visited Pollock’s Toy Museum on Scala Street, near Goodge Street station. (We did the Wellcome Collection the night before: yes, shrunken heads, Japanese pornography and terrifying obstetrical equipment in the evening - and mad looking dolls the morning after; don't ever let anyone tell you that I don't know how to show a girl a good time.)
Recommended: well worth a visit if you’re into that sort of thing - amazing what we were once satisfied with when toys were inanimate lumps that didn’t require batteries and weren’t cleverer than us (even speaking as someone who is old enough to have had a foot in both camps). And the shop downstairs is full of old-school toys (you know – the type that you can actually hold in your hands and don’t require a USB connection). And Edward Gorey books. In fact, the whole place – shop, museum and building in general – does have the feel that it might have just sprung out of a Gorey illustration. (Kind of appropriately, I first became aware of Pollock's many years ago when walking home in the very early hours of a foggy London night - when I turned the corner and saw the shop front full of old toy theatres I did for a moment wonder if it was really actually there, or if I was just overtired.)
Yes - satisfyingly creepy; I’ve always found old toys, or at least the artwork and imagery that accompanies them, to be somewhat disconcerting, and wandering around a maze of small and extremely creaky old rooms is satisfyingly atmospheric – even on a day when sunlight is streaming through the windows.
And that’s before we even get onto...gulp...the dolls!
I actually did have a bit of a Fuckmyboots!! Moment when I ducked into one room and turned to see this lot staring at me:
(They were behind glass - so I was safe. But that's not all of them, by any means.)
I noticed that I experienced an odd kind of reverse cultural relativism: whereas the British and European dolls made be shudder with a kind of mild horror, the Japanese and Chinese dolls looked positively friendly– their faces exuded a well-meaning jollity rather than the empty, cauterized and vaguely malevolent glare I usually associate with dolls (and matryoshkas have never bothered me – although I know some people have an problem with those too). I wonder if it’s because as a European the European dolls, with supposedly European faces, look more uncomfortably unheimlich than the dolls with racial features that are not my own. (Hmm, there might be something there, but it can’t just be that though – because the black dolls looked positively spooky too.)
(Oh, and if you look very closely you can see - in the top left corner of the picture - the headless image of what is clearly a very handsome and broad-shouldered apparition of immaculate taste and charming manners - clearly a sterling chap when on this side of the veil.)
The weekend before last I spent a few days with my Spanish partner in London, during which time we visited Pollock’s Toy Museum on Scala Street, near Goodge Street station. (We did the Wellcome Collection the night before: yes, shrunken heads, Japanese pornography and terrifying obstetrical equipment in the evening - and mad looking dolls the morning after; don't ever let anyone tell you that I don't know how to show a girl a good time.)
Recommended: well worth a visit if you’re into that sort of thing - amazing what we were once satisfied with when toys were inanimate lumps that didn’t require batteries and weren’t cleverer than us (even speaking as someone who is old enough to have had a foot in both camps). And the shop downstairs is full of old-school toys (you know – the type that you can actually hold in your hands and don’t require a USB connection). And Edward Gorey books. In fact, the whole place – shop, museum and building in general – does have the feel that it might have just sprung out of a Gorey illustration. (Kind of appropriately, I first became aware of Pollock's many years ago when walking home in the very early hours of a foggy London night - when I turned the corner and saw the shop front full of old toy theatres I did for a moment wonder if it was really actually there, or if I was just overtired.)
Yes - satisfyingly creepy; I’ve always found old toys, or at least the artwork and imagery that accompanies them, to be somewhat disconcerting, and wandering around a maze of small and extremely creaky old rooms is satisfyingly atmospheric – even on a day when sunlight is streaming through the windows.
And that’s before we even get onto...gulp...the dolls!
I actually did have a bit of a Fuckmyboots!! Moment when I ducked into one room and turned to see this lot staring at me:
(They were behind glass - so I was safe. But that's not all of them, by any means.)
I noticed that I experienced an odd kind of reverse cultural relativism: whereas the British and European dolls made be shudder with a kind of mild horror, the Japanese and Chinese dolls looked positively friendly– their faces exuded a well-meaning jollity rather than the empty, cauterized and vaguely malevolent glare I usually associate with dolls (and matryoshkas have never bothered me – although I know some people have an problem with those too). I wonder if it’s because as a European the European dolls, with supposedly European faces, look more uncomfortably unheimlich than the dolls with racial features that are not my own. (Hmm, there might be something there, but it can’t just be that though – because the black dolls looked positively spooky too.)
(Oh, and if you look very closely you can see - in the top left corner of the picture - the headless image of what is clearly a very handsome and broad-shouldered apparition of immaculate taste and charming manners - clearly a sterling chap when on this side of the veil.)
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