Posted by: Jerry
After living in Hackney for four months, last weekend I finally made a trip down the road to Mare Street's finest attraction, the home of The Last Tuesday Society. And it was certainly worth the wait. Originating in the 1870's, The Last Tuesday Society is an organisation run by Viktor Wynd who curates exhibitions, runs lectures and holds extravagant masked balls.
11 Mare Street is where you will find The Little Shop of Horrors - an emporium of artifacts and objects assembled on the basis of their aesthetic or historical reference. I was also lucky enough to set eyes on the Winter Exhibition: Royal Beasts curated by Alice Herrick showcasing a fine range of taxidermy including a walking polar bear, a group of red squirrels enjoying a game of cards and an entire wall lined in mounted animals heads.
The beauty of the museum is the composition of what is on show. While it is only small, this isn't the sort of place you can just pop in and out of, there is something weird and wonderful lurking in every corner and if you don't look hard enough, you're likely to miss something special. I was glad I made the decision to look up high when I discovered an angel winged Border Collie and ginger cat suspended from the ceiling.
Many of the items in the exhibition and shop are for sale, each individually priced with a delicate lion cub marked at £940, for example.
Stepping down stairs in the museum was like entering an abandoned pirate ship full of a mysterious treasure collected through years at sea. Split over two dim lit rooms, here I found a whole range of racey, whimsical and, at times, a little frightening, inanimate objects from eras past and present. I sat down at a dinner table with a lioness, shivered at shrunken aliens in jars and got nostalgic for fluffy Furbies.
If, like me, you would like to pay a visit to Hackney's leading curiosity shop The Last Tuesday Society, it is open Wednesday-Sunday from 11am-7pm and the closest station is Cambridge Heath. You can find out everything about the organisation including currents exhibitions and up and coming events on their website at www.thelasttuesdaysociety.org.
Please note: No animals featured in the museum were killed for the purpose of the exhibition, all creatures are long dead historical relics of another age, or zoo/pet/road kill deaths.
