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The Anatomical Venus --an " epically illustrated " new book by Morbid Anatomy founder Joanna Ebenstein--explores the curious history of seductive female anatomical wax models, created in the 18th century and peaking in fashion in the 19th. The book traces--in images and words--the evolution of these enigmatic sculptures from wax effigy to fetish figure and the embodiment of the uncanny. Described by Publisher's Weekly as "the strangest book of 2016, " The Anatomical Venus officially launches tomorrow, and we are celebrating with two events. The first will be a conversation on Thursday, June 2 between Joanna Ebenstein and Evan Michelson of the Science Channel’s Oddities taking place at the Rare Book Room at The Strand (more here ) followed by a book signing. For the more committed among you, on Saturday June 4th The Morbid Anatomy Museum will host a day long symposium exploring the range of topics covered by the book including anatomized women, wax, the ec...

One thinks of Anatomical Venuses as an 18th and 19th century phenomenon, but here is material proof that they continued to be made at least until as the early 1930s. This dissectible life-sized wax Anatomical Venus was created around 1930 by the wax modeling workshop of Rudolf Pohl and exhibited at a fairground museum as part of Oktoberfest 1933 and 1934. You can see her today at the fabulous Münchner Stadtmuseum . Learn more in new Thames and Hudson / Artbook / D.A.P. book The Anatomical Venus, out soon! More can be found here . Photos by Joanna Ebenstein .

The strangest, without a doubt, is an 18th century wax figure known as the "Anatomical Venus": a comely young woman, life-sized and nude, lying prostrate on a pink silk cushion in what looks to be a state of sensual rapture, her torso flayed and all her glistening organs -- including a womb containing a tiny fetus -- revealed. Her long brown hair is real, her eyes are open and unfocused, and the cloth of her pillow is crumpled -- she might as well be writhing. The product of one sculptor's clearly intimate experience with cadavers, she suggests an Enlightenment-era St. Teresa ravished by communion with the invisible forces of science. --"Exposing classical art's true colors: A Getty Villa exhibit adds brilliant hues to works once thought to be unadorned." Holly Myers for the Los Angeles Times , 2008 Morbid Anatomy began in 2007 as a research tool for an exhibition called Anatomical Theatre , which explored the uncanny allure of historical wax medical models...

The Sleeping Beauty, a waxwork whose breast rises and falls ever so slightly, as seen in the video above. The model pictured here is a 1925 replica cast from his original mold after the original 1767 wax model destroyed in a fire and crafted by Philippe Curtius. Curtius was the uncle (or possibly the illegitimate father) of the Anne-Marie Grosholtz, who would rise to fame as a wax modeller in her own right under her married name Madame Tussaud.  This piece can still be seen, breathing gently, at Madame Tussaud's in London. In her book Phantasmagoria , Scholar Marina Warner says of this piece: "The illusion of permanent sleep is invoked to deny the reality of death... The Sleeping Beauty functions as anti-memento mori....she promises immortality as the suspension of time." Find out more in the new Morbid Anatomy book The Anatomical Venus , published by DAP in the US and Thames and Hudson in the rest of the world. You can find out more here .

I was recently invited to select a single object from Blythe House--the storehouse containing the remains of early 20th century pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome's once million strong collection --for an episode of the Wellcome Collection 's “The Thing Is… " From the over 100,000 amazing objects in the collection--including ivory anatomical mannequins, wax vanitas busts, antique sexual aids, Greek anatomical otives, torture devices, statues of saints and even a Peruvian mummy--I chose, it will not surprise regular readers to discover , Henry Wellcome's Wax Anatomical Venus (see above). I had been curious about this enigmatic creature ever since Kate Forde and I featured her in the Wellcome’s 2009 Exquisite Bodies exhibition . Although diminutive--she is only three feet in length while most others are life-sized--she is still an extraordinarily uncanny and charismatic object. She was also a very mysterious object, with very little I could discover, despite my be...