Plaça Sant Iu 5,
Jaume I

The Catalan sculptor Frederick Marès (b. 1893) lived out a remarkable 98 years, much of which he spent collecting. He must have done, for here is his collection; a vast building of five floors, home to a huge number of Hispanic religious sculptures; not to mention room upon room of 19th century everyday effluvia, from cigarette cards to fans, photos to toy theatres.

The upper floors of the museum, referred to as the ‘collector’s cabinet’, are evidence of Marès’s whole-scale plundering of the discarded and unwanted. He sought to preserve all that fashion, or use, had discarded; and so the collection provides an enormous scrap-book of late nineteenth century taste.

But taste sometimes turns unpalatable with age. In the Ladies Quarter (room 32) – perhaps the museum’s most atmospheric room -- amongst the fans and the trinkets, you’ll find a wall of framed compositions of a very dubious elegance. Look very closely at these little idyllic scenes and floral designs, and you’ll discover they are all made from human hair. Flowers and petals curling delicately, crafted from shaped sheets only a single hair thick; still retaining the colour and shine of the head from which they were once cut.

contributor: Nigel Hayler