A glittery bat, a poofy owl, and a tale of Yeats and Crowley

Also, Barbara Walters's weirdass dish warmer

Hello all! I know it’s the October spooOOOooky issue, but my day job is trying to murder me right now, so please accept my apologies because I haven’t had the time and attention to devote to this production that I normally do. But I’ve still found some fun things to highlight — at least three of which I would very much like to own, and one that I would very much like to set on fire.

SO. There are bat brooches, and there are BAT BROOCHES. The silver and gold brooch above, which is in the collection of London dealers Wartski, is entirely covered with old mine- and rose-cut diamonds with cushion-cut ruby eyes.

The description notes that bat motifs were more of an Art Nouveau thing, so this brooch, which is English and dates to around 1880, is unusual:

[Bat motif] jewels predating 1900, particularly so lavishly set with diamonds, are very rare. The brooch would clearly have been made with the intention of playing with the disquieting associations of the bat and is imbued with the Victorian sense of the macabre (as well as a clear sense of humour).

Even better, it comes with a frame that allows it to be CONVERTED INTO A TIARA.

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Nothing particularly spooky here, I just adore this poofy, squinty owl. Circa 1890-99 with Italian hallmarks, the owl is parcel-gilt silver (which means that part of it is gilded) with glass eyes and beautiful texturing to depict the feathers. The owl is placed on a footed (hooved?) base of marble, and in total it’s around 11 inches tall. I really recommend clicking through to see him from other angles, because he’s a delightful little puffball and if I had a spare €11.000 ($11,700), I’d be heading over to Florence, Italy tomorrow to buy him from Ponte Vecchio-based dealers Bernardo Antichità.

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I’ve always loved the mischievous little devil horn tiaras designed by our late Queen, Vivienne Westwood, mainly because their perfect but understated small size sets them apart in her generally over-the-top universe. Westwood made them in all sorts of variations, like the diamante version she’s wearing above, or the gold one she famously wore to Buckingham Palace in 2006 when she was elevated to the title of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

There’s currently a brown marble version on Poshmark, but alas — it’s $3,200, so it shall never be mine. There are also a couple of Westwood leather headbands with light-up horns on 1st Dibs, but they’re a bit too much for me.

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Continuing with the devil theme, this circa 1880 sterling silver beer barrel charm conceals a tiny, spring-loaded imp as a novelty reference to the saying “the Devil lives in a bottle.” When you open the barrel, his little enameled head pops out like a jack-in-the-box. It’s available from Butter Lane Antiques for $1,500.

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Not much info from Bonhams Skinner on this early 20th century ventriloquist dummy, probably because it wants it that way.

It sold for $205 in the Autumn Americana Collections auction earlier today at Bonhams Skinner, and I hope whoever bought it sticks it back in that case with a large cinder block and dumps it into the Mariana Trench. (Lol, as if it would ever let them get that far.)

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The collection of my nemesis Barbara Walters is going up for sale on November 6 at Bonhams New York. Barbara Walters: American Icon primarily showcases her jewelry collection — with some furniture, paintings and assorted tchotchkes thrown in — but the great thing about having my own self-indulgent newsletter is that I get to ignore the Harry Winston diamonds and highlight the above early 20th century Georgian-style silver-plated warming stand with chicken legs and the face of a tiny satyr. I’m forced to (extremely ungraciously and begrudgingly) admit that I like her for having owned this.

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In honor of the season, 1st Dibs has assembled a number of pieces on the site into a Wunderkammer, or cabinet of curiosities. It’s got lots of taxidermy, mourning jewelry, stone specimens and even some Alexander McQueen x-ray leggings.

The piece above — which places an impala skull and horns atop a patinated metal base — dates to around 1970-1979, and it was created by London interior designer and gallery owner Antony Redmile (click through to see a photo of perhaps the most 1970s man ever). A 1985 article in the Chicago Tribune described the designer’s extravagant style:

He glued a zillion shells to a cabinet for Princess Grace; constructed a life-size seated camel (“overlaid with crushed ostrich egg, malachite and silver”) as a dining table base for the Acapulco home of the Baron and Baroness Portanova and devised a surrealistic furniture series for the theatrical artist/designer Erte.

Redmile’s company is still in existence and the website notes that all their materials (antlers, taxidermy, etc.) are sustainably and ethically sourced. I still don’t particularly want any of it.

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Anyway, those Baphomet-like horns can’t help but remind me of that colossal asshat — sorry, renowned occultist Aleister Crowley, so what the heck: I’m here and this is the spooky issue, so pull up a chair and let me tell you about That Time William Butler Yeats Kicked Aleister Crowley Down the Stairs.

According to Yeats’s biographer Richard Ellman, this really did happen. (I read somewhere that he actually heard it from Crowley, not from Yeats, but whatever.) I don’t feel like looking it all up for correct dates and whatever so I’m just going to riff it out by memory; please forgive any gleeful editorializing.

Ok, so: around the turn of the last century, both Yeats and Crowley were members of an occult society that also included writers Bram Stoker, Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Conan Doyle, Irish revolutionary (and Yeats love interest) Maud Gonne and a bunch of other fairly well-known people. The group had a lot of highfalutin romanticized ideas about mysticism, but in reality, they weren’t much different than the rest of Victorian society, which at this point was obsessed with mediums shooting ectoplasm out their ears.

American medium Mina “Margery” Crandon and the aforementioned ectoplasm. From the fantastic article “Ghosts in the Machines: The Devices and Daring Mediums Who Spoke for the Dead,” by Lisa Hix in Collector’s Weekly.

At some point Yeats and the rest of the group decided that Crowley was using his “magic” for evil, so they voted to kick him out. Crowley — who embarrassingly called himself “the Great Beast” — found out about the plan and decided to steal the sacred papers outlining the group’s rituals.

In case you were wondering, the best way to approach this task (or perhaps the worst, considering the outcome) is to put on a mask of the Egyptian god Osiris and swath yourself in voluminous tartan robes with a big fricking Crusader’s cross on your chest. Bedecked in this finery, Crowley went steaming over to the group’s Temple of the Golden Wang (or whatever), which was literally a room above a café in London. As he was starting up the stairs, Yeats and a couple other members of the group appeared at the top. The two men began to literally shout magic spells at each other, and when Crowley made it up to the top, the spindly, bespectacled Yeats kicked the Great Plaid Beast right back down the stairs.

Crowley then pulled a “well I don’t need your stupid society” and started his own religion which was called Thermidor¹ or something like that. No, sorry — it wasn’t that but it was something close. “Thermidor” is only in my brain because I memorized the entire 1984 Philadelphia Phillies yearbook when I was 12 and it told me that the favorite meal of my official Phillie crush, Von Hayes (#9), was lobster thermidor. Sorry. (GO PHILS) (As I’m writing this, our beloved wet himbos are trailing the Diamondbacks by two in the eighth inning and my 87 yo dad is about to start whipping D batteries at the tv announcers)

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Ok that’s it for today, everybody. I desperately need to get some sleep. One last thing, though: there’s some fun stuff in the online Music and Monsters sale ending on Halloween at Bonhams Los Angeles, including scripts, costumes and props, as well as Jerry Lee Lewis’s custom-made piano.

I hope you all have a wonderful Halloween!

M xx

1. Thelema. I just looked it up. The religion was/is called Thelema. Also, I’ve read some bits of speculation here and there that Crowley might have been a British spy, either reporting on people within the group or abroad. If so: helluva cover story, you gigantic horny jackass.