In London there’s a museum dedicated to the anatomist John Hunter’s specimens. It’s located within the Royal College of Surgeons, just off Lincolns Inn Fields. I used to go to there when I lived in London—regularly, like church. I never photographed it, believing that to capture it would be indecent. To my current dismay—I never even wrote about it. Memory has distorted this place to an otherworldly fairy palace.: the glass cases ranged over two floors, their luminous contents amassed in an alien parliament, each contained in its fluid void. [A friend of mine who knew a curator there said the bottles must be regularly topped up with formalin. Can you imagine?]
I have my own skull arrangements I’ve undertaken, travelling to ossuaries, portal tombs and anatomical collections over the last two decades, culminating in the search for the accused witch Lilias Adie’s skull in Ashes & Stones. I have yet to puzzle out my own fascination with human remains and the stories calcified within them.