for wunderkammer: tableau synoptique d’oreilles d’a. bertillon

mysterious lurker, ramona has submitted this beatiful taxonomy of the ears of french criminals to the wunderkammer. says ramona:

The attached is for the wunderkammer – now I am suffering from anxiety that it is not sufficiently wunderful [editor’s note: ramona, stop being a dork].   I love it as its own thing, but i also particularly love the odd story of its creator, M. Alphonse Bertillon, who never let the obtuseness of lesser mortals (everyone else) stand in the way of his rampant o.c.d.   He was even written up by Ida Tarbell, a gobsmacking interview at which to have been a fly on the wall.   I would like to think that there are picturesque names for each characteristic shape, but I fear M. Bertillon had no room for poetry in his cataloguer’s soul.

one of the five hearts (a metaphor) of the ragbag is my obsession with the names of things. let you and i be the poets that bertillon was not. to wit:

my left ear is an emesis basin (fig. 3) and my right ear is somewhere between a bass clef (fig. 44) and a wilting orchid (fig . 16).