From the sailors chests.

[mizzarrogh]

This is not realy a project, and i hawe no idea where to put this, but among things that did a deep impact on me as a child was whan i did wisit my dads parents who lived in the south in an old marine city, beside the old navy museum wich at the time where cheap to wisit for kids and the had an amazing exhibiton spanning from the shipbuliders models in the 16-1700 to the early trading routes with East asia and America and WW2 submarines and minesweepers retired from from the Swedish navy and of course sh*tloads of old guns and rifles, i remember somebody had even built a whole palmtree out of old navy beyonettes and flintlook pistols, i think most of the ships and the cutaway section of the submarine with the periscope in the live exhibision are still in place on the new museum, but in the older days they used to show more of the magasin exhibisions.

However, back in the day there where also a few antique dealers who had small botiques where one could buy anything from modern toy cannons to actual old ship parts. I remember whan one walked into one of those shops as a little kid there was that almost magic feeling like from the Hergé cartoons, i am pretty sure some of You guys here can relate to similar things.

In those smaller exhibison where sometimes a window corner with things the sailors did bring home as soveniers from all around the world. The more interesting one is an old arboretum on the casematt walls on an old fort wich contain many, many exotic trees and other plants the sailors brought home for scientific studies or out of curiosity.

Other indoor exhibisions could be things like collections of exotic seashells.

Needless to say i begun collect similar things my self whan i found dead seashells, exotic plant seeds, etc.

Later on i made some light fixtures out of pieces of old boatwrecks where i did found them on locations where the pices othervice had been destroyed and lost to history.
I still hawe paerts of the old seascell collection and add to it whan i find empty shells on the seashore in foregin countries (of course one need to chek so it is ok to collect shells, but i newer kill living shells for my collection, i only pick up shells wich are allredy empty and not from endangered species, i always release living shells back to where they live if i pick them up for studies or find them washed up ashore where they can't crawl bak to the water)

Personaly i want to create thet feeling of an old 1800s home with exotic elements (However it is a bit anacronistic since i use alot of modernt hings and also want to show and use my old radio collection and things like that amon the older style pieces and a lot of the furnitures are of course later replicas from the 1930-40s since the originals are sometime realy hard to find or way too expensive for my wallet, but as long as they are well made and fits the style i think it is ok since i actualy live here and it is not an actual museum exhibision with actualy rare pieces).

I wonder if there are more persons like me here who share the same king of curiosity and what do You do with Your finds?