Comments (0) Best Decor on the Macabre - 2010
Gold Bug
How many retail stores have signs saying “Please don’t touch the taxidermy”? If your decor needs a touch of the macabre — or you’ve always wanted to live like the Addams Family — Gold Bug is the place to shop. It helps if you like insects, of which there are many in varied forms (all dead). The store’s knowledgeable staffers can tell you whether that preserved butterfly is post-pupa (that makes it look fresher, apparently) or not. Also on display, among the gargoyles, spiders and baby-skull-shaped candle holders, are artist Shelley Kimball’s “Victims of the Station Fire,” a buck and a doe made of papier mache and ash from the 2009 conflagration. Jewelry by the likes of Jamie Joseph and Ria Charisse uses nature’s finest materials (crystals, sliced minerals) and forms (branches, flowers, more bugs). There’s also clothing suitable for anything from leather fantasies to pirate dreams. Gold Bug is a touch Gothic, a little steampunk — as if Dracula were running the gift shop at the Natural History Museum. 22 E. Union St., Pasadena. (626) 744-9963, goldbugpasadena.com. —Lisa Horowitz
