Well, after the wonderful and exquisite treasures on the inside of the exhibition (see my earlier post), which I was not allowed to photograph, I was funneled into the gift shop.
A glance told me that I had to linger there and take some photos of the truly spectacular tat (junk) that they are selling there. Some of it is just such great tat, and I wanted to share it with you.
Top of the list is the King Tut wine rack (top left). It is just priceless. I was tempted to get one for our resident wine expert, JoAnne. But luckily, I could not affort it. These things are shockingly expensive.
Then there were these wonderfully awful pens . There were Mummy ones, Anubis ones, and Tut ones (column right). I admit that these would be wonderful for kids. I thought about getting one for myself to use as a sort of “ironic” statement, but couldn’t make up my mind whether anyone but me would get the joke.
There were lots of other things, such as ties of various sorts with designs of spectacularly poor taste, paintings of the artifacts, plastic crowns and head-dresses that you could wear, sceptres and crooks, etc. Maybe some of this stuff was good, and you actually bought it. I don’t mean to offend… I did not look for very long, and may have missed some treasures amongst the other stuff. I’ll spare you the details of the other stuff, and instead show you this collection of…tut-dolls. Wonderfully tacky….to the point of being cute, in fact. (Also good dolls for kids, though…..)
Yeah, I know. I’m some sort of snob, and I’ll get hate mail about this. Sorry. But I should say that I loved the stuff too, because it was so tasteless and to their credit, they made no pretence at it being anything other than it was: Really expensive tat. Tut-tat!
-cvj
November 18th, 2005 at 2:55 am
So was this the ulterior motive on posting the first entry on Tut?
November 18th, 2005 at 3:24 am
I had a dream once where I was going around inside the pyramid and to my thought processes within the dream, this comment came out of thin air, about the desecration by intrusion. It showed these little articles, that you show clifford.
Then I was lead through some amazing hallways and sculpture that was three dimensional and extruded from the walls, all along the length of this hallway.
I have not seen anything like it in my travels through the literary and graphic world. Maybe, just a poignant way to describe the history?
This, would be counter to the way things were written on panels then as a two dimensional recognition of what art was then, to way it has exploded to visionary proportions now??:)
Cubist valuations of quantum gravity? Perspective of Mona lisa’s smile? Oh, where does it all end?
November 18th, 2005 at 4:10 am
Clifford, this reminds me of the most wonderful museums with the most terrible gift shop…there is this small village in Mexico that discovered that the land in their small cemetary preserved the corpses in almost perfect condition, so they dug them up and made this tiny museum with naturally mummified corpses (including for example a pregnant women, a murder victim,…, never seen anything quite that morbid before or since). In the gift shop of course you can find tiny replica of the especially grotesque exhibits, sold as keychains etc. Sadly I don’t have access to these pictures right now…but now doubt they already have a website.
November 18th, 2005 at 10:40 am
Clifford,
Is this your way of saying that you didn’t get me a Tut Beanie Baby?
Chantal
November 18th, 2005 at 11:10 am
Clifford,
I usually like your posts but the inadvertant advertising you give the gift shop grotesqueries is not worthy of this august forum.
Tut-tut
November 18th, 2005 at 2:44 pm
I don’t know if this will make you feel better Citrine, but part of the revenue from the gift shop is supposed to go back to the Egyptian government to fund restoration projects. Since money is always so short for Archeology, I am happy to encourage the sale of Anubis pens etc. in this case.
November 18th, 2005 at 3:21 pm
Samantha, I’m guessing that citrine was joking….. “tat” is not meant to be complimentary…. I don’t think that people will be rushing out to buy this stuff as a result of me making disparaging remarks about it… right citrine? Or did I misread you?
-cvj
November 18th, 2005 at 3:27 pm
Samantha and Clifford,
If I knew that the proceeds were being donated to such a worthy cause I’d give a donation, which can be done without buying the gift shop stuff!
November 18th, 2005 at 3:45 pm
citrine… I totally agree with you. The gift shop stuff was entertainment…I did not buy anything. Stuff was overpriced anyway, as I said in the post. I think that wine rack was $400 or something like that…..!!!
Cheers….
-cvj
November 18th, 2005 at 4:35 pm
I am speechless with awe.
November 19th, 2005 at 11:56 am
A doll of a 4000-year old mummy….that should make for some interesting playtimes…if you’re Steven King!
November 20th, 2005 at 2:57 am
[...] Well, I’m a bit disappointed. Just got back from seeing the new Harry Potter film. Went to see it at Mann’s Chinese Theatre (you know, the one with all the surprisingly very small handprints and footprints of the movie stars), which is pretty impressive as a movie theater (though overall not as quite good as the Arclight Dome, ten blocks away), an indeed the line did snake back three sides of a small block, and there was some buzz of excitement. But I am disappointed because there were no nutty fans with costumes or anything! What’s wrong with the Youth of Today?! I had thought of this excellent title (almost tops my Tut-tutting at Tut Tat one… only the best for you, dear reader….) for the post I was going to do with pictures of these people. Nothing. So this post is completely pointless (i.e., more pointless than usual). I just had to use the title anyway, as I don’t know when I’d get the chance every again. Sorry. [...]