Tucked inside a strip mall amongst Cowtown Skateboards, Central Barbershop, and Dutch Bros. Coffee around the corner, Curious Nature’s window full of taxidermy and skeletons is an anomaly. It hearkens back to the Victorian Era and beyond; something of an antithesis to the southwestern aura of Phoenix. Located in the Central Avenue neighborhood, this “fine natural history emporium” is an ode to the tradition of the Cabinet of Curiosities. A “small collection of extraordinary objects,” the Cabinet of Curiosities was essentially a miniature museum, and was popular with the wealthy and curious alike as early as the sixteenth century. Curious Nature is Phoenix’s own little corner of macabre wonder.
Dirge recently caught up with the owner of Curious Nature, Mason Conway. We discussed the fascinating ephemera contained inside the moss-colored walls of his modern wunderkammer, the challenges of running a shop like his, the small but supportive community of oddity shop owners, and where he sees the future of oddity shops headed.
Dirge: How did you become interested in natural history and oddity objects?
Conway: I guess it really started when I was a kid. Of course, I was super into animals. And the more exotic and crazy, the more I was interested in them. That’s a pretty normal thing for kids. Then when I was in my early twenties, I started working as a veterinary technician, and I worked in vet med for 10 years. I spent the last three years teaching at some local private colleges, so there was that aspect of the anatomy and physiology… plus, you know, throw in being a goth kid in high school, and it kind of all fit together. After a while, I just kind of got really burnt out on teaching and I wanted to try something new, so I opened the shop.
What drew you to curate, essentially, your own curiosity cabinet?
I’ve been collecting now for probably about 13 years, and because there wasn’t anything like [Curious Nature] in Phoenix, there just wasn’t, it made it really hard to try to find anything. I was fortunate at the time–I actually lived above the old space* in a condo. The shop that my partner had been running with some friends had moved out and so the space below the condo became empty. I was at a particularly trying time in my career as a teacher, where I was coming home frustrated and angry every day, and he told me “just quit, just try to open the store that you’ve talked about,” and that’s really what made it happen.
I didn’t have any friends that really were into this or that collected like I did, so I was nervous about how [Curious Nature] was going to be received. I was afraid that I was going to have people, like, throwing fake blood on my window, or people protesting the shop at First Fridays, stuff like that. But thankfully, people were into it and they were excited! Now I’ve put all of our resources into growing the store and being able to offer more and provide more for the community.
*Curious Nature recently moved from their small location on Roosevelt Row (the arts district in Phoenix) to their much larger, new location on Central Avenue.
That’s interesting because Phoenix is in the desert and the iconic imagery associated with the desert is the cow skull resting on the sand, underneath the sun: an image of death. Has that environment, the physical environment, and the social environment of Phoenix, influenced your curation of Curious Nature?
Well, what happens is when we get tourists that come in and visit the shop, a lot of times they’re looking for southwest-y, desert-y kind of skulls and things like that. Being a Phoenix native, that is not what I’m into at all. I want the polar opposite! And I think that’s true for a lot of our customers, too. People want deer. If I get skunks, or possom, or raccoons, you know, a lot of stuff that’s “garbage critters” to other people, that’s what a lot of my customers are looking for as far as taxidermy goes.
I think the reason that there really wasn’t a store like this before is that Phoenix is kind of a weird city, in that, despite how big it is, it seems like anybody that’s creative or artistic, when they start to get on their feet and are doing something cool, they leave. They go to Portland, they go to L.A., they go to New York, because there just seems to be more stuff to offer. So that is another reason why it was kind of important to me to try and bring something like [Curious Nature] to Phoenix.
Curious Nature houses a quality collection of “ethically sourced taxidermy, skulls, and bones, to exotic plants, collectibles, and gifts,” among other things, including funeral and post mortem ephemera, which is certainly an impressive range of items. How do you select which kinds of items to procure and sell in your shop?
A lot of the stuff in Curious Nature pertains to natural history–that’s really what I love. But I do like a lot of history. I like any kind of weird medical equipment. So if I find it, I will definitely bring it in; I realize there isn’t a huge market for these types of things in Phoenix, but if I like it, I’ll bring it in. There’s a lot of screening involved. A lot of the stuff that people don’t see is the amount of work that we do to make sure things are legal–especially with the natural history stuff–that it’s sourced in a way that meets my ethical code of what I’m comfortable selling.
I’ve also had people come in that request certain things all the time. I’ve had people ask about certain kinds of jewelry, or some of the post-mortem stuff. Then I’ll try to make sure I can find that to bring in here.
Obtaining ethical specimens seems like it can be really challenging, like you said. You have to fact-check every step of the process.
Another reason that I don’t carry a lot of native stuff from Arizona is that there are a lot stricter game and fish policies and things like that. It’s easier for me to carry, like, old vintage African taxidermy, because they know you didn’t go up to Flagstaff and kill it without a permit. Obviously, that impala was not running around Flagstaff.
Speaking to the culture of Phoenix, and how your aesthetic is very particular, do you find that Curious Nature attracts people who already know what you sell and who are interested in natural history and odd ephemera? Or do you get a mix of people who visit your shop and don’t know what to expect?
For the most part, word of mouth and social media are how people find out about us, so most people, when they come in, they know what they’re getting. Of course, we do get the occasional person that drives by and sees taxidermy in the window, so they pull over to check it out. Sometimes they’re confused–it’s always funny when people walk in and they’re in here for 15-20 seconds and ask: “What is this?” It’s a store… Or they’ll walk through and ask: “You can buy this? This is for sale?” Yes…
(Laughs). Natural history and oddities, it seems, are almost en vogue. The communities interested in them are becoming more visible.
I would agree with that. I think that people are getting more interested in it. Everybody really wants to make sure it’s ethical–that seems to be the big thing. People have that morbid curiosity, but they also want to make sure it’s okay; that you’re not a monster. You can be a weirdo, so long as you’re not a monster (laughs).
(Laughs) yes. Obviously obtaining ethical specimens is challenging, as you previously stated. What are some of the other challenges that you’ve faced operating a quality-focused oddities shop?
The biggest thing–and it’s kind of my big pet peeve–is that there are a lot of people now that are able to get things that they shouldn’t. They’re importing things illegally; there’s so much illegal trafficking that’s happening. And the amount of time and energy that we spend making sure we’re doing things the right way and legally makes it really frustrating to see somebody on Instagram who has a pangolin skeleton that they bought on eBay. Really, that guy should be in prison. [The pangolin] is a highly protected animal that he has no business owning. Or things like shipping over a protected bird species taxidermy–like flamingos–that’s a huge no-no.
How has your experience as the owner of Curious Nature shaped your view on oddity shops? What direction do you see curiosity and oddity shops headed into the future?
To be honest, I haven’t ever really thought about it too much. This is the first business I’ve ever owned, so I’ve been figuring a lot of stuff out as I go. I think our future, at least, is really dependent on our community and the support of our community, which is why it’s important to me, every day, to make sure that we are connecting with people and giving them what they want. And that we’re staying active by doing things like hosting classes; I want to make sure we’re actively participating with our customers.
I think it’s the same for all of the [other oddity] shops, too. While it’s becoming cool and trendy there’s a little bit of a… when you see someone selling bats on Amazon, for example, you have no idea where they came from. Were they were imported legally? How were they collected? Anything like that. That can be a definite threat to shopowners like us, or Hail in Nashville or Bazaar in Baltimore or Rest in Pieces in Virgina. I know all of those guys and it’s a little disheartening to see things on Atlas Obscura recommending “go buy stuff on Amazon.”
What do you want people to know about Curious Nature? What do you want people to take away from the experience of going to an oddity shop?
I guess the thing that I want people to know about is that there are shops, and there are benefits of going to them. If you’re getting something off eBay, you’re not going to know the history of the piece; you’re not going to know its story. I definitely want to shout out Hail, Dark Aesthetics–they’ve been doing open mic nights in their shop and poetry readings. And then Bazaar in Baltimore–if I have questions about the legality of things like old bird taxidermy or old human medical specimens, Bazaar gets a lot of that. Rest in Pieces is a new shop in Virgina, and I know they’re doing a ton of their own bone processing. They’re a newer shop, really nice people, and they do some good work.
