The Last Tuesday Society: A studious, macabre and mindful experience

“There’s something really beautiful about bones,” says Allison (Ali) Crawbuck, 35, the director of The Last Tuesday Society & Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & UnNatural History.

Ali looks at the full skeleton of a lion in front of her, which lived at the Glaswegian Zoo before being moved after her death to the museum, where her pearly bones are now on display. 

This museum is a cabinet of curiosities hidden beneath Mare Street in Hackney, featuring oddities from around the world, including one-eyed pigs, taxidermy, framed erotica and Russel Brand’s pubic hair.

Walking past a taxidermic two-headed lamb, Ali explains how the museum’s founder, Viktor Wynd, stocks the rooms with trinkets he finds during his regular travels to Papua New Guinea and Benin, as well as whatever he finds tucked away in the back of his cabinets at home.

“It’s an oddly intimate experience that causes all five senses to tingle”

“I keep thinking that there’s no more space left, and then somehow it continues to be filled,” she says. “We have lots of cabinets filled with lots of things with absolutely no categorisation, so it is very much what you take from it yourself.”

For this reason, many people choose to come alone, opening their senses to the hundreds of unusual items they’ve likely never seen before. Whether it’s feeling the presence of people’s ashes donated to the museum by visitors, staring down Furbies propped atop wobbling piles of books, or looking at Victorian hair art made from the tresses of deceased loved ones, the museum is an oddly intimate experience that causes all five senses to tingle.

“I think people feel comfortable because you’re never really alone,” says Ali, waving her hands around the cluttered walls.

Ali mentions that some prefer to enjoy a glass of absinthe before heading down the golden spiral staircase into the museum’s depths. “The people that come here to drink absinthe, they’re not drinking it to just have a quick fix,” she says. “It’s about the whole experience of the ritual and then sitting amongst our exhibitions or coming to our talks.”

The ritual she refers to is the careful preparation of the drink, which you do yourself. By combining absinthe with drips of chilled water and a sugar cube, you can create a delicate drink far removed from the botanical spirit’s reputation as a fire-breathing ABV beast.

“Wild, luxurious madness is what The Last Tuesday Society is all about”

“Absinthe was always connected to art and literature,” says Ali, explaining that the museum’s curious contrast between the indulgence of oddities and mindful drink rituals is an international academic phenomenon.

The Last Tuesday Society hosts talks exploring everything from Satanism in bohemian Paris to dark fairy tales from around the world.

It also hosts exhibitions, its next one, opening July 8 to September 15. Free to the public, it will explore the magical and medicinal origins of absinthe, showing off 19^th century glassware and spoons for cradling the melting sugar.

The exhibition is called Let Me Be Mad, taking its name from novelist Marie Corelli’s quote in Wormwood: A Drama of Paris, where she proclaims, “Let me be mad, then, by all means! Mad with the madness of Absinthe, the wildest, most luxurious madness in the world!”

After all, wild, luxurious madness is what The Last Tuesday Society is all about.