Pumpkin curiosities

Happy Halloween from ShopCurious!

If you’re celebrating on the East Coast of the USA, I hope you’re not inundated with water, or without power  - in which case a pumpkin may prove to be a useful candle holder.

I saw pumpkins masquerading as lots of things in American shops – everything from cooking pots and punch bowls to candles, plates and creatively carved decorative table centre pieces.

Thankfully, there was also the real thing in the form of these wonderfully misshapen gourds. 

And at Sonoma’s Cline Cellars, pumpkins lined the driveway, right up the steps…

… to this curious fellow.

But we Brits are catching up in the pumpkin presentation stakes, as I discovered on a recent visit to Elizabeth King’s delicatessen in Parsons Green (see below).

Not sure this was meant for Halloween, but I love this pumpkin coloured lampshade sculpture (photographed at London's Design Junction) too.

Do you?

Halloween curiosities in San Francisco

I’ve never seen so many skeletons and so much spooky stuff as on my recent visit to San Francisco. The lengths people have gone to in decorating their homes and shops for Halloween is most impressive, let alone some of the outfits I saw  - like this frightening fellow at Fisherman’s Wharf (above).

Cobwebs and coffins are in abundance, along with spiders and other creepy crawlies. Mendel’s Far Out Fabrics and Art Supplies shop encourages visitors to make their own costumes – with some curious examples on show (below).

ShopCurious might have expected to see skulls and bones in the window of Haight Street curiosity shop, Loved to Death...

... but not inside Sausalito pilot houses.

By the way, Sonoma’s Sebastiani Theatre is showing a Witchy Poo Halloween Extraganza this weekend, which promises to be curiously camp as well as creepy.  If you’re in the area, do check it out.

Will you?

PS For a tourist trip that will seriously spook you out: ShopCurious visits Alcatraz in our latest post at The Dabbler.

Halloween fashion and fitness fun

My efforts to avoid Halloween related activities over the weekend were thwarted. What I love about sporty people is that they’re always ready to make an occasion out of any opportunity, especially if it involves dressing up and having fun.

Even after two hours of Zumba partying, the fabulous folk at Maloca in Putney were happy to pose for a photograph in their strangely sweaty Halloween outfits.






















And at my local gym, curiously creative Terry (formerly a fashion designer) from the front desk had produced a work of art from a pumpkin, as well as re-styling the fixtures and fittings, with the addition of spiders, zombies and other corpse-like curiosities.






















Our lovely instructor, Kien, also got into the spirit of things by handing out horribly unhealthy sweets at the end of a Body Attack class. How thoughtful…

Anyway, now I'm going to try and hide myself away from trick or treaters for the rest of the day. If I wear a designer morphsuit no one will see me, will they?

Have a happy Halloween!

Will you?

PS Check out ShopCurious's latest Curious Trends post for more quirky, cover-up clothing…

Let them eat Dodo cake...

Last night’s Experimental Food Society event at the Victoria and Albert Museum was full of surprises – even for ShopCurious.

Curious culinary trends included food landscapes and architecture, vegetable cupcakes and edible fashion.

But it was remarkable sugar artist and cake sculptor, Michelle Wibowo, who stole the show. Who would ever have imagined that a curiously cute kid with a passion for baking would grow up to create a severed head cake for a Halloween birthday party?


























Wibowo's latest curiosity cake creation was a giant Dodo, made especially for the Experimental Food Society’s annual ‘Spectactular’ in London last weekend. I say was, because last night we ate it.

And here she is performing the cutting ceremony:

I bet you want to know what Dodo tastes like?

Do you?

The fashion for all things freaky

No matter whether it’s Halloween, have you noticed the tendency for artists, musicians and designers to want to shock their audiences?

A couple of months ago, Alice Cooper held a macabre evening of horror at the London Dungeon to choose freakish acts for his Halloween Night of Fear shows at the Roundhouse in Camden. The winners included a very unique ballet routine, where the dancer stuck needle-mounted feathers into her arms. Another winner was a cabaret style performer, who hammered a nail up her nose and put hooks with weights attached though her eyelids.

A further winner went one better – and used a drill to bore through his nose. Then there was a man who lifted barrels of beer using hooks through his arms, who also put his tongue in a mouse trap.

On the art and design scene, we’re continuing to see all manner of morbid fashion accessories and weird taxidermy, like Alex Randall’s Rat Swarm Lamp (as shown above).


The current focus on our mortality is fueling an obsession with death and disease. Medical curiosities, anatomical models, pickled body parts and freakish pathology inspired installations are increasingly being incorporated into the work of emerging artists and designers.

With this in mind, we thought we’d tempt you with our own freak of nature – a dicephalic, two headed teddy bear called Ted and Eddy that’s now available at ShopCurious, courtesy of our most curious friend Viktor Wynd and his Little Shop of Horrors. Just the thing to cuddle up to in bed.

Hope you don't get nightmares?

Do you?

Halloween fashion horrors

What’s your verdict on the curiously unique Halloween outfits in my article over at The Dabbler today… even ShopCurious finds them rather scary.

Do you?

Sweet but spooky retro treats

Did you know that Halloween is the second most commercially successful holiday next to Christmas? In the United States, Halloween candy sales average around two billion dollars annually.

I stumbled upon this old style American candy store on a recent visit to the States. Full to the brim with old fashioned varieties of sweets – plus retro memorabilia that included images of dead movie stars and celebrities like John Wayne, Elvis Presley and Ronald Reagan.











Never mind the ghoulish apparitions and skulls on display, I got a distinctly weird feeling about this store. The staff were very curious - and there was something decidedly eerie about the place. I started to imagine all sorts of horror film scenes, like candy store displays coming to life in a sort of Mexican Day of the Dead style procession.






















And I was reminded of the Mexican style curiosities (called Die-a-ramas) by Blue at ShopCurious. There’s one curiosity box in particular - featuring a skull and the word ‘Muerte’ (death) - that’s made from a vintage sweet tin, decorated with found objects and macabre ephemera. If you’re looking for unusual gifts for Halloween, this is curiously creepy.











Go on, have a sweetie…

Will you?

Web of curious Halloween horrors

I spotted a huge variety of pumpkins for sale outside a supermarket in southern California the other day. The Cinderella pumpkins looked so perfect – like something out of a children’s cartoon. I wasn’t sure if these were $9.99 for each pumpkin, or per box? Though I can probably find out by checking the prices on the internet.

The web is a great source of information on everything to do with Halloween. Here you can learn how to carve the perfect Jack-O-Lantern, where to go, what to wear - and discover all manner of Halloween related ideas and curiosities.

By the way, I noticed there are some suitably spooky events going on in London, including the Ghost Stories Show at the Duke of York’s Theatre. However, those who are especially curious might like to dance the dance of death at the Last Tuesday Society’s 'A Danse Macabre' Halloween Ball on 29th October. Amongst the decadent delights on offer are a 'torture garden operating theatre' and The Urban Voodoo Machine. You’ll also be able to watch the iconic Empress Stah ‘suspended from her chandelier draped with Miss Havisham cobwebs, syringing out her own blood and drinking it…’ Mmmm.. most tasteful.



The dress code is ‘beautiful and damned’, so if you’re looking for a costume it’s worth considering some of the curiously unique accessories at ShopCurious. In fact, may I suggest this hand crafted corset-like, black leather spider’s web belt by Thea Cadabra?







Anyway, that’s enough advice from the web - I’m sure you’re more than able to spin the guests in your own seductively mysterious web of dark and delicious charm. Just remember, if you're not home before midnight, you might turn into a pumpkin.

Will you?