On one of my days in Barcelona last fall, I was walking down Passeig de Gràcia, and decided to step into an antiques mall called “Bulevard Dels Antiquaris,” just to take a look around. While the mall area (hallways between stores) was open, the actual individual antiques dealers and their various shops were all closed, perhaps due to being in the afternoon during what could have been siesta time. At any rate, most of the stores had big glass windows or glass walls, so I could still look around without actually being able to enter any of them.
There were some unusual finds in this antiques mall, that’s for sure. Let’s start with my opening picture: these two figures (or dolls), seated on a sofa. A closer look suggests that they’re vintage ventriloquist dummies, since I can see a gap in the sides of the chin so that the mouth can move, as a ventriloquist would have it do when it’s supposedly “speaking.” One is dressed, one is not, and at a walking-by glance, it’s like two people just hanging out.
But there’s another oddity in this picture – look at the side table with the fruit on top – beyond my initial glance, I can see that it’s not a side table, but appears to be some sort of helmet/mask, as there’s a screen where the wearer’s eyes would be, and the chest plate has gaps on the side, suggesting it fits over one’s shoulders. I can’t imagine what scenario something like this would be used … has anyone ever seen anything like this before?
Then there were the babies. Look at these babies, just sitting in a basket, in a closed-up antiques store.
Are they ok? After a few seconds of looking, I realized they weren’t moving, and not real, despite being hyper-realistic. Why would anyone want real-looking babies in a basket as a decoration? Wouldn’t it be a bit creepy to live with something like this? Here’s another one, also very realistic-looking, but also just a doll (or sculpture). I’m not even sure if these are technically “antiques,” they look pretty new to me.
