I am particularly fussy about skulls and using them as decor/utensils/accessories/what have you. I find they can, more often than not, look too kitsch…and kitsch isn’t something that sits well with me at all. I’m the sort of person who will gag at the sight of a skull/rose (often you’ll find a gun there too…) tattoo.
But when I encountered Etsy store Catacomb Culture : Bone Decor & Art, I was pleasantly surprised by what I found there. I never thought, in a million years, that I’d see a human skull bowl I could actually envisage myself eating out of.
But Catacomb Culture changed all that. Currently I’m evening dreaming about eating my branflakes out of one of their hyper realistic skull bowls, while simultaneously binging on Netflix’s Slasher.
An art series of artist Jeremy Ciliberto, Catacomb Culture works to explore the beauty of death through bone decor, jewelry, furniture, kitchen ware and clothing.
“The personification of death during the Middle Ages has inspired me to view her as a timeless performance artist. She is everywhere and nowhere, installing a permanent chaos, fear, and hysteria in the era’s cultures through famine, plague, and war. She reaps one’s life, leaving their body behind to rot away into nothing more than just bones. It is during the dismal times of mass deaths when individual burials are unachievable, mass graves and catacombs are the only option. I view the bones as an artistic opportunity for a medium. I am continuing the bone art movement in ways that defy the human form, and acknowledge that the dance of death needs no music.” – Jeremy Ciliberto
Below you’ll find everything I intend to buy from Jeremy once the money starts to pour in…
Human Skull Bowl
Mini Skull Ornament
Human Skull Torch
Human Skull Candle
Celebrating the strange and the shadowy, the damned and unseen 
That’s some nice stuff.
I’m with you on the kitsch front. No, Halloween is not a great time for ‘people like me’ to stock up on decorative trinkets, because 90% of it is plastic cack.
(I do quite like this cauldron mug though. It’s tacky, but it’s the right kind of tacky; a perfectly serviceable drinking vessel in which actual clay has been involved at some stage, and not at all gaudy.)