Home decor from Oslo, suitable for gothic taste

I was browsing through the internet and remembered a shop I saw in Oslo when I visited that tremendously pretty city during the summer. The shop is called Milla Boutique and they have all kinds of things from forks to art prints and steampunk-ish installations.

Unfortunately I could not afford all those pretty things I saw in the shop and I think the shop itself had much more objects that might interest a goth than what they have on the webpage.

Still, here are my favorites from their webpage, which seems to be only in Norwegian:

Link to the store

I want that so bad. Although there were other installations too, with electricity and rodents and stuff that I liked more.

Link to the sotre

Link to the store

I doubt they post products to other countries but if you visit Oslo, this is a really great store to visit. And no, I have not got any sponsor money from them. :) I just really like some of their products that hit my aesthetic spot.

DIY: Gothic Decor with Lights

I must admit, all my DIY tips are rather lame, it is not as if I am doing anything from the scratch. Anyways, I thought this is a pretty good idea, so I am sharing it. This was inspired by the fact that in January all Christmas lights are -50% or even more on sale and I bought this lovely blue light. In my family (if not in Finnish families in general) it is a custom to put some of those lights into a big glass bowl and use them inside the house as decorations.

Well, I did not have a glass bowl, but I did have a small black cage! More gothiness in one small detail.

This blue light is rather strong, since it could also be used outdoors. That's why it is not really a subtle night lamp or anything. :) It makes the whole room blue!

Freezing jewelery: Lapponia Jewelery from Finland

Today I am not going to introduce to you anything goth, or at least the necklace I am showing you is not goth straight away. Still, I think it is beautiful and I believe it fits my style. The necklace is made by Lapponia Jewelry, which is a Finnish brad that makes all kinds of jewelry but they are usually modern and represent cool, almost chilly design. The designers seek inspiration from Finnish nature, mythology and many other things too.

The specific necklace which hits my aesthetic spot is Winter Pearl by Mari Isopahkala, who made Winter Pearl as a guest designer for Lapponia, after winning the title Young Designer of the Year 2013.

I got this necklace as a graduation present from my parents when I became Bachelor of Arts last summer. I love this necklace, how it looks like ice pearls, but also like some chemical formula.

Gothic Art in Spotlight: Cabinets of wonder by Christine Davenne and Christine Fleurent

This post is about an art book, if one likes to call it that or a reference book. The book is Cabinets of wonder by Christine Davenne (text) and Christine Fleurent (photos). I got the version in English, but the original is in French. I bought it in Oslo, Norway a few months ago.

This book is about cabinets of curiosities and wonder, why people have started to make them, collect things and organize them. According to Christine Davenne, cabinets of curiosities are closely linked to the evolution and progress of arts and science. They reflect the ideas of Renaissance and are practically little museums.

The content of Cabinets of wonder is divided into six chapters and those chapters are of different themes the cabinets may have. The chapter named 'Exoticae: Monsters from Elswhere' is sure to interest a goth. Cabinets of Exoticae are filled with oddities, peculiar and grotesque items or individuals, for example deformed Siamese twins skull or a 'mermaid' which is unfortunately a forgery.

On left the Mermaid, on right a stuffed guitarfish.

It would be awesome to own a cabinet of curiosities, even though those little exhibitions tend to collect dust. This book is not a DIY manual, but it is a wide presentations of different cabinets of wonder from different periods of time and the final chapter is 'The Cabinet of Wonder Today' with a subtitle 'In which the cabinet of curiosities has become the model for contemporary art exhibition.' After reading this, one could very well start to collect and create her or his own cabinet.

These are from the Cabinets of scientific interests.

In summary, the photos in this book are beautiful and many of them are creepy too and the text is intelligent and provokes new thoughts about our culture and humanity.

DIY: Gingerbread Dinosaurs

As I mentioned in a previous post, me and my friends are spending the Yule/Christmas together and were planning to do less traditional gingerbread installation. Unfortunately we did not buy enough gingerbread dough and before we had the chance to plan the whole installation with the meteor and a volcano, the dough was no more. So all we got is some dinosaurs.

The inspiration came from two little molds I found with a friend, but since they really were tiny, we needed to make some more from cardboard. Unfortunately I did not remember to take a pic of them. But I do have some photos from the edible dinosaurs.

Carefully placing the T-Rex 

After the oven

Above you can see the T-Rex with some not that impressive sugar frosting. I think this is a great evidence of the unfortunate fact that I am not an artist, or at least my skills are not that good. :D The idea of Jurassic Park scene or the Apocalypse of Dinosaurs was good, but the competence of the makers was not.

Merry Christams and happy Yule!

Gothic Art in Spotlight: Paul Delvaux

I happened to see an art program in a TV the other day. It was High Art of the Low Countries by BBC and it introduced some of the artists of Belgium and Netherlands. Thanks to this TV-show, I found out more about one particular artist: Paul Delvaux (1987-1994).

When art history happens and categories are created, Delvaux is often seen as a surrealist and that definition describes his work quite well. I also see much of macabre in his paintings. The paintings are often creepy in a more modern way, with a lot of maidens and allusions to the popular and macabre theme of "Death and Maiden". On the other hand, some Delvaux's works refer to older macabre art, like deathbeds from the Middle Ages.

Source

Source

Also the macabre art from 15th century to 16th century have a lot of surrealistic themes and situations, so I guess it once again comes down to context. One of my favorite artists from that era is Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450-1516). There is a huge similarity between Delvaux painting in the second picture and these two:

Source

Source

Although these paintings of Delvaux and these details of Bosch's paintings are similar, the context was different when they were made and the word "art" did not mean the same thing during the 16th century as it does during the 20th century. When Bosch painted, the Renaissance was slowly kicking in, but his paintings are more medieval in theme, which is about christian beliefs of Hell and Sin and other things that were important themes during the Middle Ages when life was hard, there were many wars and pestilence. Delvaux's art was created in a different atmosphere. He lived both of the World Wars, but the knowledge of Medicine escalated during his lifetime and an ordinary cold could not kill that easily and therefore the meaning of Death in the culture was indeed different and that makes the macabre art of the Middle Ages and the 20th century different from each other.

4 easy ways to goth up the Holidays

In this post I am going to point out four easy ways to goth up the celebrations that occur in the latter half of December. One reason for this post is that I am going to spend my Christmas with some friends and we are going to do all kinds of funny things, since we all represent the darker subcultures. I shall make posts about them in the end of December. 

1. The Gingerbread House
Instead of the traditional gingerbread house you could try to make the house of The Addams Family as a 2D background for example and then the characters in front of it. Or, if you have to spend Christmas with people who are not going to allow you to do anything too bold, just add two little gingerbread men to the traditional installaton and call them Hansel and Gretel. Me and my friends are probably going to make an installation of the final days of the dinosaurs or a dramatic Jurassic Park scenario.


2. Snowman
I saw one with devil horns in a park the other day. Too bad I did not have my camera with me. So the tip is, why not make a really sinister looking snowman next to the gates of your garden? See if any Christmas carollers dear to knock your door.


3. Candles
This time of the year is mostly dark and all celebration is concentrated around the day when sun is starting to shine a bit more, basically all celebration in the end of December is about celebrating the turning point of winter towards spring and summer. Generally people tend to burn more candles when it is dark and cold, but some people claim people used to burn a lot of candles and torches during the winter solstice to encourage sun to "win the darkness".

I am not going to say goths are the children of darkness or anything that cheesy, but I'd like to point out that a lonely candle makes the darkness around seem even more dark. Candles seem to be widely accepted decorations in goth subculture and so they are when it comes to christmas ornaments. But those candles with happy little elves and reindeer are not that goth-y. On the other hand I think those candles with an elf or an angel decoration are a bit perverse and sadistic. I mean, you burn them. The little happy elves are going to melt.


4. Special Christmas decorations
There are a lot of little enterprises who make all kinds of decorations and I am quite sure a goth can find a lot of creepy and kooky ornaments online. I myself bought some silver hand grenade ornaments for the spruce. First of all I think they are pretty in a very disturbing way. Secondly, I do not believe violence is productive way to solve conflicts and I think these ornaments can be seen as a joke or a twisted way to reflect how people have through out times justified a lot of violence, death and war with religion.