© 2024
Virginia's Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Rest in Pieces

Shopping has moved to a whole new level this summer, with the opening of a gift shop in Richmond – a place that specializes in bones and soft tissue preserved in jars.  

If you’re looking for an unusual gift – something that really is one of a kind – Justin Torone invites you to visit Rest in Pieces, a store that specializes in things that are dead.

“There’s butterflies, and there’s like eyeballs in jars.  Everybody can find something here that they like.”

Torone started the shop with his girlfriend, Alaina Gearheart – a woman who makes jewelry from crystals, dead bugs and bones.  She clearly shares his interest in remains.

“For our two-year anniversary, I got her like two human ribs.”

Since then, he’s acquired all manner of anatomical merchandise from the delicate skeleton of a bat to a bird’s skull with it’s telltale beak.

“Those are pheasant skulls. Other than that I can’t sell any bird skulls, because you need a federal permit for any birds, but there’s like sets of bobcat, raccoon, possum, these are little skunks.  We do these little bats in coffins.  Those are a pretty popular item.  I’ve sold out of those and had to restock them.”

There are also small animals and body parts floating in jars.

“Fetal armadillos, fetal possums, possum feet, badger feet, coyote brain.”

Now you might expect the public to be repulsed by such things, but Torone says business has been great.  Customers include artists and students, believers in biology or the occult. On a weekday afternoon Daniel Murray and Peyton Webb  wander in for a look.

“We just ate at Carytown Burgers and Fries, and we saw the flyer y’all had, so we thought we’d come and check it out.  I’ve always wanted to visit an oddities store around here, but didn’t know we had one around here.  How about you.  You’re not grossed out? No, it’s interesting.”

A few minutes later, Sierra Rhodes arrives.

“I think it’s really cool.  It’s more of an art form to me so why waste it?  Put it in a jar and look at it. How do your friends and family react when they show up at your house and this stuff is sprinkled around? Usually not well.  I had to move it from our living area to my room, because it freaks my roommates out a little bit, but everyone is into what they’re into.”

Torone agrees but notes that  not everyone was happy to have this curio shop in town.  Officers from the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries showed up a few minutes before the store’s grand opening.  To promote conservation, they said, state law prohibits the sale of feathers, antlers, paws, talons, fish or meat from animals native to Virginia. 

“And so  I was like ‘Oh my God, that’s half of what I have here,’  so I actually closed down the shop for like half a day because I was just so stressed out about it, and I couldn’t handle talking to people, but then I talked to some other people that I know and found out that under my fur permit, I’m allowed to sell skulls, feet and things, but not the full animal.”

So you can’t buy the antique taxidermy on display, but Torone says there are plenty of parts from places other than Virginia.

“Those are kudu horns.  You’ve got springboks, black wildebeest, tarantulas, African porcupine quills, camel skull we just got, which is really crazy looking. I love it.”

He buys from collectors and supply houses, gets donations of deceased animals from pet shops, farms and nuisance wildlife companies.  In cooler weather, Torone also picks up road kill – sending fur to a tanner, discarding soft tissue and allowing the bones to dry before sharing them with a hungry tank of flesh-eating beetles.

“Then usually within 24 hours it’s all clean.  It’s what the museums do.  It’s the best way to get a skull clean.”

Torone says nothing in the store was killed by a hunter, and he hopes state law will be modified to exempt prohibition on sale of animals that died a natural death, were killed by cars or survive thanks to taxidermy from a time in history when no one thought about conservation.