Are you the kind of person who thinks a tiny glass jar full of human teeth would be the perfect stocking stuffer for Christmas?
Then we have just the gift store for you.
Studio Payne, “where arts and oddities meet,” is a new curiosity shop that opened this summer on St. Paul’s East Side.
Owner Cameren Torgerud said he started the shop because he wished there was a retailer who sold the unusual things he likes to buy, find, make or curate.
Like the skulls of animals or humans, or a taxidermied version of a two-headed baby chick or vintage medical tools.
In addition to weird collectibles, Torgerud also devotes about half of the shop to an art gallery. The most recent exhibition has art works with a circus freak show theme.
The store also has a resident tarantula, a five-and-a-half-foot red-tailed boa constrictor named Zeus and a shop cat named Franklin with 13 toes on his front paws (seven on one foot and six on the other).
“He’s an oddity,” Torgerud said.
Torgerud, 26, also employs a colony of about 5,000 flesh-eating beetles that he uses to prepare bones and skulls before they’re put up for sale.
“Right now they’re cleaning an eight-foot snake that someone brought me to clean for her,” Torgerud said.
Torgerud’s cabinet of curiosities includes interesting crystals and stones, antique canisters of household products like baby powder, balms and linseed oil, old automobile fuses, tin windup toys and vintage Hot Wheels cars from the 1960s.
But it’s clear Torgerud has a weak spot for objects that used be part of something living. His personal collection of skulls range from alligator to weasel, from shrew to baboon.
“I think they’re really beautiful,” he said.
“They’re all different. It’s a way to be close to an animal,” he said. “This way I can touch a cougar.”
Torgerud said he buys skulls on eBay or from skull collecting groups on Facebook.
Sometimes he finds something sellable by walking in the woods or along the railroad tracks.
In Torgerud’s hands, deer vertebrae can be turned into a $200 lamp, a bat skull becomes a pendant, coyote teeth become $5 earrings and mink paws become $8 key chains.
“The raccoon I just found. The human teeth, I bought a huge collection from someone who was collecting them,” Torgerud said of some jewelry he made. “Quality teeth are actually really expensive. Human teeth for sale aren’t that common.”
Torgerud also sells a line of wet artifacts, animals or animal parts he’s preserved and displays in jars of alcohol.
The cow heart came from a biology study company. The rat was something Zeus killed but declined to eat. The fetal beaver came from a friend who worked at a wildlife preserve.
“One of the beavers died and it was pregnant and he kept all the babies. He gave me a couple because he had a ton,” Torgerud said.
There’s also animal horns, lost dentures, teeth molds, an old Boy Scout first aid kit, an educational microscope, a tiny vial of rat feet, a prosthetic leg.
According to Torgerud, something qualifies as an oddity if “it’s something people collect that you wouldn’t think to.”
Studio Payne is located at 1129 Payne Ave., St. Paul; 651-230-7767.
This is the first in an occasional series about unusual or one-of-a-kind businesses in and around St. Paul. Contact Chin at rchin@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5560 if you know of a business you think we should write about.
