The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities

Holy Devices and Infernal Duds: The Broadmore Exhibits

The Broadmore Exhibits

Greg Broadmore came by his interest in Lambshead’s cabinet of curiosities honestly: through a familial connection. “Lambshead’s family and mine were connected by an uncle, so even after my grandparents moved to New Zealand, they kept in touch.”

On a trip to England at the age of twelve, Broadmore and his parents visited Lambshead. The artist remembers “a man in his eighties who looked more like fifty, but was as big a curmudgeon as you could possibly imagine. But he seemed to have a soft spot for me. At the very point where I was getting bored listening to them talk in the study, Lambshead suggested he step out to take me to the kitchen for some dessert . . . and instead he brought me down some steep steps into an underground space filled with wonders. The place was hewn out of solid stone and had that nice damp cool mossy smell you find in caves sometimes.”

Broadmore remembers Lambshead giving him a wink and saying, “Don’t break anything,” and leaving him there with a glass of milk and some banana bread. “For me, it was like being given a free pass to an amazing fairyland—the outward expression of all of the visions in my head of anything miraculous. It had a deep and lasting effect on my art.” For two hours, Broadmore roamed through Lambshead’s collection, finding “countless old toys and ridiculously complex machines and scandalous artwork and comics and . . . well, I began to wonder what wasn’t to be found there.”

Broadmore never visited the cabinet again, and since then has, of course, gone on to forge a near-legendary career as an artist and creator aligned with Weta Workshop. “I was particularly saddened to hear of Lambshead’s death a few years ago,” Broadmore remembers. “It brought back all of those memories of those perfect hours in his cabinet of curiosities.”

For this reason, among others, Broadmore kindly agreed to provide illustrative reconstructions for four of Lambshead’s museum loans, which have never been photographed, even after his death, pursuant to instructions in his will.