My grandfather was a bit of a hoarder, but it never got too out of hand as he managed to keep most of his stuff down in the basement. Considering I lived with them, I have strong memories of a bunch of cast iron thingamajigs down there, so I’m sure...
If you look closely at the words printed in the window, you will read Jimmy’s Station Museum. Yes, that’s right. This former Shell Station in Waverly, Iowa has been converted into a museum featuring tons of gas-related memorabilia and restored antique cars. It doesn’t have a website. It’s just one...
Ashley Bryan, who will turn 93 years old in a few weeks, is a writer and illustrator of children’s books. Although he was born in New York City, he has spent the last 40 years living in retirement on Little Cranberry Island in Maine. But that doesn’t mean he’s sitting...
We’ve covered teeny tiny book collections, outdoor parks full of mini buildings, the dedicated work of one Siberian artist and even the world’s smallest museum (yes, it’s the size of a closet…now go clean yours to make room for a new exhibit I’m putting together). But what about an art...
Because I’m a poor asshole, I usually cannot afford to go to a hair salon. I end up badly cutting my hair into uneven bangs or have my mom (a beauty school dropout) give me a trim. But if I lived in Le Havre, France and was a man I...
I’ve decided to write only about my personal visits for historic house museum week; it’s much easier and I realize I have seen way too many in my life. Whenever I travel I make sure to see at least a few museums, and usually one is a house museum. It’s...
The architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed 1141 buildings, but only 532 were actually completed during his lifetime. Many have since been demolished with only 400 buildings still standing. But did you know he designed a cat house? In the early 1950s, Gerald Tonkens commissioned Wright’s office to design and build...
It’s time for another teeny tiny museum. Believe it or not, there is literally a museum in the window of the door of a private residence in Basel, Switzerland. It’s called the Hoosesagg Museum (hoosesagg means ‘trouser pocket’ in case you don’t speak multiple languages). Because the home is historically...
Just when you think I’ve told you about every single miniature museum in the world, I go out and find another one. Why the heck do I keep doing that? We’ve been all over the place from the mini-Matchbox cars at the Matchbox Road Museum to the pint-sized historical scenes...
This blog has covered odd taxidermy collections more than a few times in the last five years from Alabama’s Mann Wildlife Learning Museum and the 19th century collection of frogs in Switzerland to Romania’s August von Spiess Museum of Hunting and the largest collection of stuffed dogs at Bítov Castle...
