And from whence does this Ancient Roman-style barrel vaulted ceiling appear, you might be asking? Not from Italy, but rather from the imagination of the talented and bizarre brain of the American aristocrat Henry Champman Mercer, who had it built in 1914 to house his vast collection of tools and artifacts from before the Industrial Revolution.
It is fitting that chairs, boats, and other cultural artifacts hang from the top of the ceiling like some drug-envisioned realization of a scene from _Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory_: Because Mercer was eccentric and rich, and rich crazy people have done far worse things in history than having an endearing fondness for folk culture and a desire to show off one’s collectibles.
Some of my favorites are here, revealing my own macabre POV:.
*a fake Vampire slaying kit that the museum curators took a long time to discover was not from the 19th century.
* a stove-plate from the 18th century showing a Bible scene of the prophet Elijah being fed by ravens that is completely creepy and suggests the feeding is going the other way ’round.
* an actual gallows and a torture device from about 1800 called a “Pear of Anguish” that was stuffed into a criminal’s mouth so that he could not scream.
Things for the children (who make up a lot of the museum’s clientele).
