Marvelous and Macabre: Curio Cabinet of the Hudson Valley

By   |     |  The Source

A collection of antique medical tools sits near a display of preserved insects. A shelf of old books shares space with taxidermy. In one corner, a jewelry designer creates custom pieces using human hair. These strange and unusual oddities, antiques, and unconventional home decor are all found at the Curio Cabinet of the Hudson Valley, a new oddities shop in Poughkeepsie. Owners Laura Bell and Ian Burns are longtime collectors of the unusual. “Preserving memory and retelling stories is important,” says Bell. “I don’t like things getting lost to time. It’s neat to find something old that nobody has seen or heard before and tell its story, even if it’s something as simple as a bottle or a pin.”

Bell has been curating oddities since she was 17. “It started with crystals and weird trinkets in parking lots,” she says. “I’d follow bands around, selling stuff at shows. I’ve always had an interest in the strange and in mineralogy, and it just grew from there.”

Curio Cabinet is designed as a series of vignettes featuring mounted insects, antique medical tools, taxidermy, crystals, and other oddities.

In 2009, she took her business online with two separate Etsy shops—one for crystals, the other for oddities and antiques. She also sold at pop-ups and markets, sometimes guerilla vending in parking lots, and other times more formally at night markets, tattoo conventions, and festivals. Over time, she connected with a community of macabre vendors and collectors and landed display cases at the Hyde Park Antiques Center and Red Owl Collective in Kingston.

When the pandemic hit, she paused the business but, as in-person markets returned, merged the two Etsy shops into Curio Cabinet of the Hudson Valley. After years of selling in shared spaces, she felt ready for her own store. “We expanded into a larger space because our collection of offerings outgrew the capacity of our cases, as well as what we were physically able to display at pop-up events,” she explains.

Retail Historians

On November 2, Bell and Burns opened the Curio Cabinet’s first physical storefront at 300 Main Street, Poughkeepsie, in a building likely built in the mid to late 19th century. The 2,000-square-foot space is home to an eclectic range of treasures, including antiques, vintage taxidermy, crystals, vintage fashion, jewelry, and vinyl records. Much of the inventory reflects the owners’ fascination with preserving history and uncovering rare or forgotten objects. “We don’t have retail pieces,” says Bell. “It’s all curio cabinets to stick with the theme.”

The shop’s design is as intentional as its inventory. Bell and Burns spent months collecting vintage curio cabinets from estate sales and secondhand sellers to create a historical feel. “We didn’t want it to look like a typical retail shop,” Bell explains. “We wanted it to feel like a Victorian parlor, where every piece has its own place and story.” The interior layout is dense but organized, with display cases showcasing everything from mounted insects to antique medical tools. “We kept adding items until we filled the space,” Burns says. “Everything here reflects the kinds of things we’ve been collecting for years.”

One standout piece is a Victorian cooling table, used to keep bodies fresh during in-home funerals. “It’s not for sale,” Bell says, “but it’s one of those fixtures that embodies the kind of history we love.” Another highlight is an antique tattoo kit, which includes a poke-and-stick needle, two inkwells, and a skull cap once used for mixing tattooing materials. The kit came to Bell from a Canadian collector.

The shop also offers specialized services, including an in-house jeweler who crafts custom memorial pieces—such as Victorian hair reproductions and keepsakes incorporating ashes—along with a florist specializing in dark decor for weddings, funerals, and special events.

A 500-square-foot section serves as a workshop and event space for art classes, lectures, and community gatherings. Recent workshops have covered wet specimen preservation, taxidermy, insect pinning (sustainably sourced), and demonology. A recent event invited guests to pose for staged photos with Krampus, the folkloric Christmas devil, alongside a beer tasting from King’s Court Brewing Company. Curio Cabinet also features a rotating gallery showcasing alternative artists, with rotating monthly exhibitions.

Curio Cabinet also aims to provide a space for artists and creators who don’t have many opportunities for exposure outside of seasonal markets and online platforms. “I think you’re lucky to get one booth like any of ours, for the most part, at any given antique center,” says Burns. “If you like that kind of thing, you might have to go to 13 different antique centers to see 13 different booths. You can come to ours and hopefully see all 13 in one spot. It’s kind of just a one-stop shop.”

Bell adds, “That’s really what this is about: being a hub for the oddities community, giving people a venue and space that they might not otherwise have—something where they’re comfortable and welcome. It’s a home for the weirder side of things.”

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