Oddity Central |
- Creepy-Yet-Beautiful Ship Models Made of Human Bones by POWs
- Renzuru Paper Folding, or Origami on Steroids
- Chinese Farmer Builds Lamborghini Reventon from Scrap Metal
| Creepy-Yet-Beautiful Ship Models Made of Human Bones by POWs Posted: 22 Aug 2012 06:52 AM PDT
To pass the time, French prisoners held in British dungeons during the Napoleonic Wars would build intricate ship models from human and animal bones. Now these creepy works of art sell for tens of thousands of dollars at auctions. While English prisoners of war spent their jail time playing sports, French POWs found a rather macabre hobby – building models of enemy ships out of bones. Although it’s recorded they were treated exceptionally well by the English, because the skirmishes between the two European forces dragged on for years some prisoners remained locked away for over a decade, so they needed something to pass the time. Prisoners would keep pig and mutton bones from the food rations issued to them by the English, boil them and bleach them in the sun. But sometimes materials from their meals weren’t enough for their detailed works of art, so they supplemented their supplies with human bones from the shallow graves around camp, uncovered by roving pigs. No one really cared where or from who the bones came from, as long as they helped finish the job. Photo: Io9 The imprisoned artists used the largest bones to carve the body of the ship, moving on to the smaller ones and pieces of wood to create the finely detailed cannons and masts. Apart from human, mutton and cattle bones, the Frenchmen also used tissue paper to create the sails and their own hair for the sail rigging. At one point, there was such a market for the bone ships that people in nearby villages would smuggle turtle shells, silk, metal foil and other materials for the artists to use. Although most of the POWs’ bone ships weren’t built to scale, the level of craftsmanship makes this fault easy to overlook. Some of the more advanced creations also contain fine mechanisms that allow the sails to be raised and retract the canons inside the ship. Photo: Io9 Bone ships dating back to the Napoleonic Wars are very rare, and at auctions they can reach prizes into the tens of thousands of dollars. For example, in 2007, British auction house Bonhams sold a bone model of the HMS Victory for $55,000. But if you don’t want to spend this kind of cash on a macabre piece of history, you can visit the United States Naval Academy, in Annapolis, Maryland, which houses one of the largest collections of bone ships in the world. Photo: Io9
Photo: car around the world
Photo: Billy Bob Photo: Billy Bob Photo: Billy Bob via Io9 Creepy-Yet-Beautiful Ship Models Made of Human Bones by POWs was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
| Renzuru Paper Folding, or Origami on Steroids Posted: 22 Aug 2012 04:26 AM PDT
If you thought Origami was hard, that the advanced form called Renzuru will probably seem impossible This centuries-old Japanese art form involves folding multiple cranes from a single piece of paper, ensuring that they remain connected with each other. Renzuru, which is roughly translated as “consecutive crane” can be traced back to the Edo period of Japan (1603-1867) and is regarded as one of the most advanced Origami techniques. In order to master the art of renzuru, one must learn to make strategic cuts to form a mosaic of semi-detached smaller squares from a large piece of traditional “washi” paper, and then fold each square into a crane, without breaking the thin strips of paper that connect them. Concealing the extra paper is also a challenge. Typical renzuru artworks consist of four paper cranes arranged in a circle and attached at the tips of their wings, but some skilled masters have developed their own renzuru styles. One of these skilled artists is 70-year-old Mizuho Tomita, who holds a record of 368 connecting cranes from a single sheet of paper. Photo: asabo-airline Tomita is one of the most respected renzuru masters in the world, having folded over 500,000 paper cranes in his entire career. Although his achievements in this art are nothing-short of awe-inspiring, most interesting is how he started making renzuru cranes. His career started at the start of 1997. Ever since ancient time, Japanese have believed that the first dream a person has in a year (the hatsuyume) foretells the fortune of that coming year. In Mizuho Tomita’s hatsuyume, a crane landed from the sky and told him to “go ahead and fold origami”. The problem was he had never been any good at folding paper, and had had almost nothing to do with origami until then. Still, he told his sister-in-law about his dream, and she gave him a book on renzuru, as a present. Photo: asabo-airline The ambitious artist started studying and practicing the ancient art, but it was just as hard as he expected. It took him a week to fold a single crane, but eventually got the hang of it, and started creating artworks that he was proud of. Now, Tomita creates intricate renzuru pieces, some made up of hundreds of connected paper cranes, and teaches the art to students patient enough to learn it. Photo: Mihoko Takizawa/Asahi Photo: hibiarekore via Spoon-Tamago Renzuru Paper Folding, or Origami on Steroids was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
| Chinese Farmer Builds Lamborghini Reventon from Scrap Metal Posted: 22 Aug 2012 02:40 AM PDT
28-year old Wang Jian, a mechanic and farmer from China’s Jiangsu province, has spent the last year building himself a home-made replica of the Lamborghini Reventon, one of the world’s most exclusive sport cars. Wang developed a passion for cars at a very young age, and even worked at an auto shop for 10 years before opening his own business. Although he had a chance to work on many different cars, the young mechanic felt like something was missing from his life. It was his very own Lamborghini Reventon, a beautiful Italian sport car priced around $1.3 million. And as if the price wasn’t prohibitive enough, Wang Jian knew only a few of these gems had been produced by the Italian car maker, and all of them were sold to wealthy buyers most of who’s names remain a mystery. But he wasn’t going to let these kind of technicalities stand in the way of owning his own Lamborghini Reventon, so he decided that if he couldn’t buy one, he was going to build it. He set in plan in motion in May of last year, buying an old Volkswagen, and a small Reventon model car to use as reference. The 28-year-old car enthusiast worked hard on his project, re-welding the chassis of the secondhand Volkswagen, moving the engine from the front to the back and cutting pieces of scrap metal to build the Reventon’s aerodynamic frame. It took him a whole year to finish this labor of love, but apart from “minor”details like the lack of paint, a top speed that any bicycle could probably beat, and a Sparta n interior, Wang Jian got his coveted Lamborghini Reventon, and it had only cost him $9,500. Sadly, the police won’t let him register his sport car, for safety reasons, so instead of driving it on the open road to impress his friends, the young farmer uses it to transport fertilizer… As I mentioned in a previous post, the Chinese seem to have a fascination with home-made Lamborghinis. Just last year we wrote about another car enthusiast who built himself a Lamborghini Reventon, and a few months ago I wrote about this Chinese mechanic who builds and sells 99% identical Lamborghini Murcielago cars. And let’s not forget the not so accurate yellow Lamborghini built by Chen Jingmiao. via Daily Mail Chinese Farmer Builds Lamborghini Reventon from Scrap Metal was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
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