Mother’s Day is just around the corner and if you’re tired of getting your mom the same old flowers and candy, you can make this a Mother’s Day to remember by presenting her with a unicorn skull. Or maybe she’d like a bone from a dodo bird. How about a stuffed bat with two heads, a stuffed winged kitten, or the world’s largest bean pod? All of those and many, many more strange items are up for auction right now as Viktor Wynd, the owner of Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art and Unnatural History, has been forced by the business downturn caused by the pandemic to sell off some of his ‘treasures’. Would Mom like a pair of Victorian knickers worn by the actual Queen Victoria herself?
Hey, Harry! He’s got your leg!
“It’s utterly heartbreaking, I would never dream of selling so many of my greatest treasures, but we have no other way of surviving. We are getting ready to re-open in May so we are selling these items to make sure we are able to carry on.”
Viktor Wynd and his Museum of Curiosities have been a mainstay on Mare Street in the London Borough of Hackney since 2015. Viktor is a well-known artist on London’s West End and the founder of the Last Tuesday Society which puts on monthly literary and artistic events, and is home to London’s “most curious cocktail bar” serving traditional Absinthes. As Vyktor told The Daily Star, his business is suffering and, rather than drown in Absinthe, he’s selling some of his unusual museum items through the Chiswick auction House.
“The pandemic is an unpleasant thing and I have many things some might find unpleasant in my museum. A tongue-eating louse, a pickled horse’s stomach infected with bot fly larvae, human intestinal worms, oh and a diorama from London’s Science Museum of the plague in Venice.”
Ew. Wynd says he began collecting things as a child and never stopped. As he acquired more unusual items from around the world — dodo bones, extinct bird feathers, the skeleton of a giant anteater, shrunken heads, parts of pickled prostitutes, celebrity fecal matter, condoms used by the Rolling Stones, and more – he decided to share them with the world and opened the oddities museum. (Photos here and here.) Wynd knows those won’t all appeal to many buyers, so he has other things on display at the online auction too:
“For an estimated £3,000 ($4166) to £5,000 ($6944) a dodo bone can be bought in the sale, along with a 19-century electric shock therapy machine, an aquatic dinosaur fossil, 12 hippo tusks and teeth, a Fiji “mermaid”, a fiber-glass model of T Rex head, a taxidermy polar bear head and a rare unicorn skull.”
A rare unicorn skull? Believe it or not, Wynd claims the dodo bone is rarer – only six or seven exist in the world. He is also auctioning a full unicorn skeleton and the mounted head of a striped unicorn. Does that come with a certificate of authenticity?
Well, does it? (See the mounted head here.)
“This one, I tell them, lived for over 100s years in the park of a Ruritanian Prince, and was an absolute darling, beloved by all, and donated to the museum on its death”.
OK, so maybe not … but the auction site is filled with curious items that any Mom would be proud to say she absolutely loved – because that’s what Mom’s say. Even if it’s Queen Victoria’s knickers. If that doesn’t put a smile on her face, tell her they’re valued between £5,000-£7,000 ($6944- $9720) … and make sure you give her the receipt.
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