Friday, July 11, 2014

Four Fascinating Medical Museums


Take me to a museum and I can spend hours soaking up the atmosphere. In the U.S, there are over 35,000 museums, with the world’s largest museum, the Smithsonian, home to 19 museums. Worldwide, there are an estimated 55,000 museums. Last week we took a look at museums of death; today we’ll check out some medical museums that may astound you …


1) The Mütter Museum in Philadelphia is one of the best medical history museums in the country. Founded in 1858 by Dr. Thomas Dent Mütter, the museum is home to anatomical specimens, wax models, skeletal specimens, antique medical instruments and other medical oddities. The museum is a combination of art, history, culture, science and technology all shrouded in the cloak of medical mysteries and diagnosis. The museum is open seven days a week and admission is charged. www.muttermuseum.org





 



2) Located in a corner of the former Central State Hospital (better known locally as the Indiana Insane Asylum) grounds is a small building which once housed the Pathology Building. In fact, it is the oldest surviving pathology facility in the country. Inside is the Indiana Medical History Museum where you will find a recreated doctor’s office from the early 20th century along with artifacts from the beginning periods of scientific psychiatry and modern medicine. The museum also offers free guided tours each Saturday from June through September of the Medicinal Plant Garden. Open Thursdays – Saturdays: admission is charged. www.imhm.org




3) If bones are your thing then this is your museum! The Museum of Osteology is America’s only skeleton museum with over 300 skeletons on display. Located in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, it’s 7,000 square feet of skulls and skeletons from all over the world. The idea for a bones museum began in 1972 when 7-year-old Jay Villemarette found a skull in the woods; he began collecting them. He opened Skulls Unlimited in 1990 and the current museum opened in 2010 with the largest privately held collection of osteological specimens in the world. The museum includes displays on comparative anatomy, adaption and locomotion, forensic pathology and the skeletons of various species of animals, including human. The museum is open seven days a week; admission is charged and cameras are welcome. www.museumofosteology.org



 


4) Just opened: The Morbid Anatomy Museum, in Brooklyn, New York offers a chance to “explore the intersections of death, beauty and that, which falls between the cracks.”  The museum held its grand opening to the public Saturday, June 28th! The museum’s collection of books, photos, art, taxidermy, ephemera and artifacts all relate to the history of medicine, social curiosities and death, with special exhibits like “The Art of Mourning” which takes a look at the mourning culture from the 18th century through the 20th. The museum is now open everyday except Tuesday and admission is charged. www.morbidanatomy.blogspot.com



There are hundreds of medical museums and natural history museums around the world. For a comprehensive list visit www.morbidanatomy.blogspot.com and review the Museums/Collectors; Medical Museums and Natural History Museums sections listed on the left hand side of the page.

Next week, a look back at a great inventor.

~ Joy

Friday, June 27, 2014

Deadly Fascinations: Funeral & Death-Care Museums (Part One)


I love museums: Those places where objects of historical, scientific or cultural importance are preserved and exhibited. There are over 35,000 in the U.S. with the world’s largest museum, the Smithsonian, home to 19 museums, located in Washington, D.C. Worldwide there are an estimated 55,000 museums.

Deathly Exhibits
And in that number, there are several museums that deal with death and the death-care industry. This week we’ll take a look at museums dealing directly with death; some are located, quite fittingly, in funeral homes. 






Horse-drawn Funeral Carriage
Ferguson Funeral Home
The Ferguson Funeral Home Museum www.scottdalefuneralmuseum.com/FuneralMuseum/collection.htm will mark its 135th anniversary next year, making it the oldest business in Scottsdale, Pennsylvania. The museum is located in the funeral home and houses a 19th century horse-drawn hearse along with several examples of American Folk Art. The museum is open Monday through Friday during normal business hours.


Herr Funeral Home
Fisk Child's Casket
Another museum of death can be found at the Herr Funeral Home’s Funeral Service Memorabilia Museum www.herrfuneral.com/Museum_498035.html in Collinsville, Illinois. The museum has a 1918 Sayers and Scoville hearse, antique burial shroud, mourning jewelry and ribbons, and a child’s Fisk casket. The casket is made of cast-iron, and was claimed to be airtight. It was designed like an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus with a viewing window at the top, making it easy to see the body inside and deterring grave robbers. For tour information, contact the funeral home.


Funeral Hearse
Redinger Funeral Home and Museum
Redinger Funeral Home
 www.redingerfuneralhome.com/museum.htm in Seiling, Oklahoma has been in business for 100 years. The museum has several displays of funeral memorabilia and houses a horse-drawn hearse. Tours are offered by appointment and are usually given by Ron Redinger, the grandson of Sam Redinger who started a hardware store in town, and found himself in the funeral business …


Child's Casket
Ohio is a state that takes its death care museums seriously boasting three museums of interest. The Peoples Mortuary Museum www.cawleyandpeoples.com/Peoples_Mortuary_Museum_153641.html
A Sampling of the Hearse Collection
is located in Marietta, Ohio and is part of an operating funeral home. The museum is named for Bill Peoples who owns the collection. Displays include hearses, caskets and funeral memorabilia from the early 1900s displayed tastefully in a building behind the chapel. There is no admission charged but scheduling a tour is requested.


Lafferty Funeral Home
Part of the Lafferty Carriage Collection
The William Lafferty Memorial Funeral and Carriage Collection www.adamscountytravel.org/history.html is located in West Union, Ohio and has a nice collection of memorabilia that dates back to 1848. If it’s hearses you want to see; this is the place, which only makes sense when you consider that the Buckeye State was one of the largest producers of hearses in the country. The museum collection is dedicated to James William Lafferty, the fourth generation of the family to work in the funeral industry. Lafferty preserved artifacts that his family had used in the funeral business and purchased other items to create a sizable collection of funeral memorabilia.


Toland-Herzig Funeral Home
Funeral Ephemera
At Toland-Herzig Funeral Home www.tolandherzig.com/_mgxroot/page_10793.php in Dover, Ohio you will find the Famous Endings Museum. The museum has over 1,500 pieces of funeral ephemera (the largest known collection), which include photos, folders and documents from celebrities, presidents, sports figures and other famous people. The museum also has audio recordings from the funerals of famous people and photos of celebrity gravesides. The museum is open Monday through Friday during normal business hours with no admission charged.


Head of Henri Desire Landru
The Museum of Death www.museumofdeath.net is exactly what it says: a museum that focuses on death and related topics with graphic, sometime grisly actual items and footage on display. (This is best for mature audiences.)  The museum offers a 45-minute self-guided tour through a world of coffins, body bags, execution devices, and letters and artwork from murderers and serial killers; you can even view the head of Henri Desire Landru, the Bluebeard of France, who killed over 200 women in the early 20th century. The museum has themed rooms: the California Death Room focuses on famous deaths that have occurred in the state like that of the Black Dahlia and the Charles Manson murders. The museum is located in Hollywood, California and is open daily. Admission is charged.


Money Casket
Hearses on Display
The mother of all funeral museums is located in Houston Texas. The National Museum of Funeral History www.nmfh.org houses the largest collection of funeral artifacts in the country. From 19th Century Mourning Customs, to Coffins and Caskets of the Past, Historical Hearses, and the History of Embalming, the museum offers 12 historic and informative displays, and continually keeps things fresh with changing funeral industry exhibits. The museum is open seven days a week and admission is charged.

And we lament the passing of one funeral museum –

Replica of Lincoln's Coffin
Embalming Display
The Museum of Funeral Customs was located in Springfield, Illinois for several years before closing in 2009. Adjacent to Oak Ridge Cemetery, the site of President Abraham Lincoln’s Tomb, the museum had a collection of coffins, funeral carriages, and a re-crated 1920s embalming room. Sadly the museum’s trust fund was mismanaged and closure was imminent. After the museum’s closing, its contents were transferred to the Kibbe Hancock Heritage Museum in Carthage Illinois in February 2011 where a Funeral Customs exhibit is on permanent display.


Caskets on Display
There is a new museum expected to open later this year: The Simpson Funeral Museum http://funeralmuseum.com will be located in Chatham, Virginia. Displays will include an 1876 Horse-drawn hearse and a 1941 Packard hearse, along with replicas of caskets for President John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. Other celebrity casket replicas include one for John Wayne and Elvis Presley.


National Funeral Museum in London
Vienna Funeral Museum
There are also numerous museums of death scattered around the world. A few to check out are the Vienna Funeral Museum in Vienna, Austria; the National Funeral Museum in London, England; the Museum of Piety located in Budapest, Hungary; the Museum for Sepulchral Culture in Kassel, Germany; the Museum of Hearses in Barcelona, Spain; the Dutch Funeral Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands. There are also two cemetery museums in Europe to visit, Hoernli Cemetery near Basel, Switzerland, and the Museum of Ohlsdorf Cemetery in Hamburg, Germany.

Next week, we’ll take a look at museums dealing more with the medical-side of death.

As they say at the National Museum of Funeral History, "Any day above ground is a good one."


~ Joy

Friday, June 20, 2014

Hair Wreaths: A Victorian Mourning Custom


Crafting Hair
Hair is one of the most unique and personal mementos people can give of themselves. Although taking hair and weaving it into memorial pieces has been done for hundreds of years as a way to remember a loved one, it was the Victorians who took the idea and crafted it into an art form.



Bracelet Band Made from Hair
Victorian Women
The Victorians had elaborate customs for any life event encountered; but this is one tradition that could take different shapes and forms. Hair jewelry allowed Victorians to carry a part of their loved ones with them in the form of bracelets, rings, brooches, watch fobs, even buttons: It was similar to putting a piece of hair in a locket. Hair from a deceased family member was usually made into a mourning wreath for remembrance.


Hair Receiver
Shaping Instructions
A mourning wreath could be made up of one member’s hair or a composite of an entire family. As family members died, hair was saved in a “hair receiver.” When enough was accumulated, the hair was fashioned into flowers and leaves by twisting and sewing it around shaped wire forms.


Godey’s Lady’s Book provided some patterns and advice on how to shape and create a hair wreath, but detailed works included the Self-Instructor in the Art of Hair Work published in 1867, and a catalog from the National Artistic Hairwork Company. Shapes were then combined into a U-shaped wreath with the most recently deceased’s hair having a place of honor in the middle of the wreath. This is why wreaths may have a difference in hair colors and textures.

 
Family with Different Hair Colors
Different Colored "Petals"
A family hair wreath was a way of telling about the family and its history; the same way a family tree indicates who members of a certain family are and their relationships, today.

Smaller Hair Wreath
The open-end at the top of the wreath symbolized the deceased’s ascent to heaven. Wreaths were then placed in shadow boxes and displayed with the open end up, like a horseshoe.
Large Hair Wreath

Not all hair wreaths were for mourning. Churches, schools and other groups might make a hair wreath from the current congregation or school. Everyone would contribute hair to be woven into the wreath shape.



Hair Memento
Bell Jar Sculpture
Hair could be made into small shapes and sent to families who lived far away as a memento of a recently deceased loved one.

It also could be crafted into three-dimensional sculpture and covered with a glass dome to set upon a parlor table.



In the early 1900s hair jewelry could be purchased through Sears and Roebuck Catalog. Today, hair wreaths can be found at auctions and estate sales. The value of hair wreaths continues to increase, with prices anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand dollars depending on the size and condition.


Tony Kendall, Owner
In the small resort town of French Lick, Indiana there is a very unique museum: Body Reflections and Antique Hair Museum www.bodyreflectionsfrenchlick.com. This collection of antique hair items, including hair wreaths, were collected by salon owner Tony Kendall who started displaying his collection of vintage razors, permanent-wave machines and hair art in his beauty salon - Body Reflections.


Displays at Leila's Hair Museum
Leila’s Hair Museum www.leilashairmuseum.net in Independence, Missouri is the only official hair museum in the world. 
Leila Cohoom

Owner Leila Cohoon, a hairdresser,  bought her first piece in 1952, and that's how the collection began. Today, the museum boasts of over 600 hair wreaths and over 2,000 pieces of jewelry, all crafted from hair.



Hair Loops
Intricate Details
Regardless of how we view the art of mourning hair wreaths and hair jewelry today, it was a way for our ancestors to keep a piece of their loved ones close in an era when remembering was all that mattered because You are never really gone, as long as you are remembered”.

~ Joy