Femius en Nicole Koenderink

Historical wax anatomy, Florence

Museo Zoologico La Specola in Florence, close to Palazzo Pitti, is filled with musty oak cabinets with nineteenth century stuffed wildlife. A rhino so big that it doesn't fit the body diagonal of the cabinet, lions so old that they are almost threadbare, stitches showing through, toes falling of .... Even some hunting trophies of Italies King Victor Emmanual II. Near the end of the museum, you suddenly come to a set of rooms filled with a large collection of anatomical wax models. Limbs, organs, heads, even whole bodies, as if cut open to display internal structure to greatest affect. Layed out in damatric poses, and comfy pillows and drapery .... Taschen has a beautiful catalogue of the collection

Deutsches Tapeten Museum, Kassel

Ever visited a wallpaper museum ? Kassel, Germany, is a smallish town in central germany, best known for an art biennale. A really strange museum is the "Deutsches Tapeten Museum" which has over 18000 pieces of wallpaper. Handmade leather wallpaper papers, as well as handpainted wallpaper that was made-to-fit on a per-room basis. Furthermore they have displays on the first machines for printing wallpaper, with as many samples of wallpaper to look at as you like. Not all pieces are on display.

Glass flowers, Harvard

The glass flowers museum is part of the Harvard museum of Natural History. It contains more than 3000 glass models of various flowers and plants. These models have been created by Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka in the 19th century. They were invited to create lifelike models of various plants, and to do this, they experimented a lot with different glass painting techniques, different colouring techniques, various glass blowing methods et cetera. The result is amazing: from most flowers on display, you just would not believe that they are made from glass!

Museo Stibbert, Florence

Far on the outskirts of Florence, in a 19th century residential neighborhood, a large villa houses the Museo Stibbert. It was the home of a 19th century englishman, Frederick Stibbert. Born in Florence as a son of an english officer stationed in italy, he was a military man himself, fighting for Garibalidi. How eccentric he was, is clear from the collection that he spent his fortune on. Yes, there are renaissance paintings, porcelain, egyptian mummies. Yes, you can find the costume in which Napoleon was crowned king of Italy. What really stands out is the enormous collection of weaponry and armour: the dining room, ball room, reception room, all filled with life-size papier mache horses and warriors clad in persian armour, european medieval armour, even japanese armour. Quite obviously, Stibbert was not married.

Speelklok tot Pierement, Utrecht

The Speelklok tot Pierement museum in Utrecht is one of the loveliest museums we know. Musical boxes, pianolas, orchestrions, organ clocks, fairground and dance hall organs, they all are on display in this museum. To visit the museum, you can participate in a one-hour guided tour. The museum guides show you special items from the collection, such as a little chair that plays musical tunes when a child sits upon it; the violinplayer, an organ with four built-in violins that are automatically played with mechanical fingers; and street organs of various sizes with a real dancing floor in front of them.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Founded by an eccentric woman, this museum is covered by an eccentric testament. After her husband died, Isabella Stewart Gardner built this large mansion in Venetian style on the Fenway to house the art she had collected on many trips to Europe. She lived there for 21 years, perfecting the arrangement of art, objects, and light every day. Her will states, that if anything in the museum is changed from how it was at her death, the whole collection is auctioned, the proceeds to be donated to Harvard. The museum is remarkable for its wonderful courtyard, and its diverse collection. Medieval church woodwork and sculpture, paintings by famous italian and dutch masters (usually not their best works), but also wonderful paintings and drawings by painter Singer Sargent, and a collection of letters and autographs of 18th and 19th century celebrities. Surpassed in quality of art, but not in atmosphere by the Frick collection.

Uhren Museum Beyer, Zürich

This museum is just a single room in the basement of one of the many expensive jewelry & watch stores along the Zurich Bahnhofstrasse, undoubtedly one of the classiest shopping streets in Switzerland. In fact, Beyer is a watch store and watchmaker with a long history itself, as it was founded in 1760. Since that time, they have also built their remarkable collection, including special pieces that were actually originally built to order for Beyer already in the 19th century. Starting with historic illustrations of timekeeping with sundials and hourglasses, the collection focuses on highlights in engineering: extremely precise wall clocks, as well as feats of miniaturization of mechanical watches by the most famous swiss brands that you wouldn't have considered possible. Who would have thought you could hide a complete mechanical watch in a coin smaller than a euro?

Wagner Museum, Bayreuth

Gletschergarten Luzern