Things from the past

Local artist and friend Brian McKenzie was recently responsible for a display involving ancestors of mine as part of the 2019 Nunhead Art Trail. McKenzie curated a collection of artefacts relating to the long forgotten story of 'the Beast of Brockley'. This beast was in fact a great great uncle of mine and the tale is one of woe. His peaceful existence in the wooded vales in and around Hatcham (now Brockley and Nunhead) was brought to a sudden end in 1872 by an enraged and vicious crowd after a supposed attack on a young woman out walking near One Tree Hill. I'm showing here some images of the wonderful and remarkably still intact victorian diorama that was made to mark the event. This along with a delicate drawing by John Ruskin formed the key elements of the display at Aquarius Golf course clubhouse. Do check Biran's blog for more on this.

Anatomy lesson

Here's a fascinating image kindly sent to me by curator of the Dittrick Medical History Museum, Mr. Gustav Schmitt who is a regular blog visitor and recently travelled all the way from Cleveland Ohio to see me for a chat in the Holborn Library exhibition just a few weeks ago. We had a very interesting talk and he mentioned at the time this rare lithograph from the Libraire Alain Brieux in his collection which seems to depict students studying the anatomy of a Bosci like character. I wonder whether this is my great Uncle Rosci who travelled extensively over Europe and died under mysterious circumstances. It's such a beautiful delicate print and a fine example of the lithographers art.

Images and stories from blog visitors are always most welcome.

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HOLBORN LIBRARY, LONDON

For the recent longest time I have been resident in a fascinating 1950's library in central London. It's a super building and Camden council agreed to my request to use the lower now closed off archive and children's library basement area as a place to continue my research and investigations into all things. For the next two weekends (Fri to Sun Nov. 3,4,5 and then 10,11,12) a local adult education establishment called Morley College, just over the River Thames in Southwark/Lambeth, have taken over some of the library spaces to show artwork by the college's tutor's. I met with many of these folk and have enjoyed seeing what they've done and find them a delightful bunch of artists showing intriguing work on the whole. During the exhibition dates you'd be welcome to come and visit me and discuss my work and latest discoveries. I have a small cupboard space in the basement.

Here's a link to the Morley College/Holborn Library website.

and some pictures of the spaces now full of art.

The impressive entrance area

Lift to the Basement

Steph Buttle and myself discussing the spaces

Organiser Peter Baxter

The library is much loved and used well by the local community

Another look-alike

Another image found on the internet sent for my Look-alikes page.

Thanks to follower Edna Basket Brown for sending this in. 

Evidence of my growing fame?

I have more thanks to send to two blog followers who have sent me images from the internet and strangely both relating to flying Bosci's. An old post on this blog (find it via the 'Older posts' button at the bottom of the page) tells about my making of my own range of rubber toys. It seems that my fame has reached far enough that I am blessed with the dubious honour of having someone make bootleg (unofficial) copies of my product! Almo Prendagast from Arkansas USA sent me these images found on E-Bay of a crude hard plastic version of a flying Bosci. 

Secondly here is a smashing old polaroid for my 'Lookalikes' page, found on Pinterest and sent by Walter from Skjolden in Norway.

Thanks for these and here's a reminder of my Flying Bosci toys in their packages, available for purchase via this blog.

Objects from the Cuming Museum, London

I must post a big thankyou to someone who has sent me a gift. Apparently Mr. Roland Pangborn from Nichols Canyon Rd. California is a regular follower of my blog and he has kindly sent me a postcard he came across in a yard sale recently. Mr. Pangborn is a postcard collector but managed to relinquish this one and send it to me. I have a section here on my blog (one of the 'other pages') of look-alikes. Several of these are images followers have found and passed on to me. This one will be joining them. 
This postcard shows two interesting archeological artifacts called 'Billy and Charley's'. One seems to be a representation of me although these lead sculptures were from a long time back. 

My investigation has revealed that William (Billy) Smith and Charles (Charley) Eaton were two nineteenth century forgers who made fake 'mediaeval' leaden figures and medallions that they then 'found' in the Thames. These two are in the collection of the Cuming Museum in South London.

Guatemalan Flying Frog...a chance to see my specimens

Heres news of an imminent opportunity to meet me and more importantly see 'in the flesh' the amazing collection of interesting animal and ghost specimens that have come into my possession and which I have been restoring.
On the weekend of March 19 and 20, 2016 I shall be making available for viewing these remarkable items as part of the Telegraph Hill Open Studios in South London UK. I currently live in the house of artist Brian McKenzie and he is taking part in this annually occuring event. Here is a link with info about the event including map and address....

http://telegraphhillfestival.org.uk/open-studio-2016/

Moving on now....
In my last post I mentioned the frog specimen. Here is the jar as it was when I took possession; incredibly murky but definitely containing an intriguing looking something!

I decided to research and then tackle the restoration of the specimen. I carefully removed the wax sealing material and forced off the long-sealed glass stopper lid. Inside was old preserving alchohol which smelt ghastly and tasted foul. I poured this away to reveal the remarkable critter within. It was quite robust and I was able to handle and gently clean it without causing any major damage.

The creature does, as described on the label, appear to be a frog with wings.

Its eyes are on stalks like a snail.

I refilled the original jar with pure preserving achohol and gently replaced the little being into the jar as quickly as possible to avoid any untoward dissintergation. Here it is now viewable in its full nature. Please come to visit next weekend and see this and the other extraordinary specimens I will make available for display.

Antique specimens

A blog reader recently contacted me offering a fantastic gift/donation which I gratefully accepted. Tyrone from Basingstoke, Hampshire was clearing the attic of his great Grandfathers house and came across a collection of old Victorian anatomical specimens. Tyrone knew of my interest in such things and I have just taken possesion of some twenty five of them. I am currently cataloguing and cleaning them as several are in a very poor state. I wanted to show some of them on my blog.

 Most jars are numbered and labelled, stating the contents. These images here are of some particuallarly fascinating ones desribed as 'specimen ghosts' of varying sorts. They do indeed seem to be solid manifest entities with solid (white) flesh, if thats the right term, and some even seem to have an internal anatomical structure visible within. The ghosts are generally of small animals or insects. and seem relatively well preserved in their alchohol solutions.

 l'm currently researching how to clean, conserve and re-seal several jars which definitely have something within but which are so murky and clouded that its impossible to see the contents properly. One, No. 278 is labelled 'flying frog from Guatemala', others as 'unknown creature'

A poem from a follower

Hi and thanks to the kind blog follower who sent me this poem from the twelfth century. It seems very appropriate to me.

I'm also putting up some more of me recent postcard finds from Deptford Market.

Deptford Market finds

I regularly travel to Deptford Market in South London. The market days are Wednesday, Friday and Saturday and I most like to rummage through the stalls htat are primarily stocked by house-clearance goods. Its a real lottery as to what might be there from day to day but this is one its' appealing features. I am always attracted to boxes of old photographs or postcard collections. One can form some insight into the character of the person who used to own the once treasured items now scattered out on tables for the world to see and buy. A large percentage of it, I'm sure ends up in landfill if it hasnt sold after a couple of weeks. Here are a few gems I have bought recently.

More to show soon in another post.

Tony from Masterchef

Over the weekend I met up with and old friend and had a fabulous time. Some of my blog followers who live abroad will not know about Tony but for most people living in the United Kingdom at the moment, he is instantly recognizable as one of the (very recent) finalists in this years BBC Mastechef television programme.

Hot on the tail of the competition we had a little 'cook off' and as I had hoped, Tony concocted a delightful little pudding for me which he called Easter Nest. It was delicious, consisting of 'sugar coated pickled plums, crochet cucumber sorbet all sitting in a woven seaweed and samphire nest'.

                                         



 For Tony I whipped up breaded baby hedgehog on langoustine soil, live truffle with carrot and cat litter crumb,vintage chocolate shard with smegma goo.

I learned so much from Tony and may become part of his plans for a change of direction in the future relating to cookery.

Fantastic old postcard

Someone has sent me an image of an old postcard with what is described as 'Bosci aus holz im Schwarzwald'. It appears to be a wooden sculpture of a beast creature very like myself, but strangely painted (I'm guessing) orange. Thanks so much to Gunter in the Black Forest, Germany.

The results of a personal parasitic infestation.

I've been working intensively since the last article on a fascinating series of discoveries. I'm ready to present this on my blog for your enjoyment. Back in late February I was plagued by an attack of itchyness. In case you dont know much about me or haven't looked at my 'more about Bosci' page in the top sidebar area, do so and it'll be evident that I am significantly hairy. All over. All beings suffer with parasitic infestation from time to time and I speculate that factors such as the clement weather and the confined nature of my box abode may have proved to provide favourable conditions for increased parasitic manifestations to occur, on me! After enduring for a while I decided it was soon enough time to examine myself by which I mean to examine my fur, to discover what might be causing all the annoying itching. 
A simple close inspection revealed a plethora of little creatures. Should one be disgusted by this? I'll leave that for you to decide. What I really want to blog about though is what was to follow on from this initial discovery. With a small jewelers loupe, I took a close look at the tiny critters plucked from my surface and even under such minor 10 fold magnification I was entranced by the complex nature of the beasts which were feasting on (I presume) my blood. There were definitely three distinct animal shapes all between 0.5 to 1.2 mm in length.

I made initial drawings at this stage.....

Spurred on to see in more detail I constructed a simple compact electron microscope. I will describe this endeavour another time in a separate blog post. I was very happy with some of the results. 

It was immediately apparent that there were in fact five different species of creature. This one is a crab-like beast with large pincer/jaws used to cling firmly onto hair strands. These were exclusively in my armpit area and very difficult to remove.

This image shows two other species together in the same shot. These creatures were remarkable tough and when plucked off and crushed between fingers with all my mite, the longer scorpion like beasts still wriggled away in search of a safe haven seemingly totally unharmed.

Here is a shot of a much rarer creature. This image was made before refining some of the microscopes settings, hence its lacking colour. These mites were eating skin flakes and other fleshy surface debris I believe. 

Then there are these remarkable little things which seem fully hairy rather like myself. During one closer inspection I discovered that these creatures did themselves bear their own even tinier parasites. You can just make one out on the right hand most critter. I was able to tweak the gamma condensing lens and add secondary scanning coils to increase magnification to around 750x and lo and behold in amongst the hairs of the creature (I have named ichius pilosus) were many of its own six legged parasites scampering around at great speed, shown here.

I have presented my findings to a local naturalist at the Horniman Museum and he assures me that all six type of animal are seemingly new to science having never before been recorded. Its possible I may get to officially name all six species but in the meantime I have temporarily given them the names;

 scabius maximus (located mostly around the genital area)
 morsus prolixus (this one causes the most pain of all)
 ichius pilosus (the little hairy two armed beast, living mostly in and around my ears)
 phlangy (the miniscual parasite living on ichius maximus)
 plob (with enormous pincers and tentacles, found in the armpit area)

The story doesnt end here. 

I was so thrilled with my discoveries that I decided to use these newly discovered critters as the subject for another batch of Bosci based rubber model products. My earlier development of a flying Bosci toy is documented in an older post on this blog (below). Using the same I approach I crafted moulds which enable the mass production of highly accurate rubber representations of the parasites. Having noticed that these minute monsters were able to endure shockingly violent force i.e. squishing, pinching and crushing and still survive remarkably well, I was particularly keen to mimic this property in the toy versions. I have exaggerated the colouration of some of the bug toys to add variety and intrigue for the potential purchaser. The bugs are sold in packs of four.

The humans whose house I have my abode in are busy preparing for an open studio this coming weekend and I plan to try to sell these products to public visitors who are keen to buy.