Talking Taxidermy And Victoriana With Audra Kunkle Of Loved To Death

Talking Taxidermy And Victoriana With Audra Kunkle Of Loved To DeathPhotos: Stephen Jackson/Hoodline
Stephen Jackson
Published on October 24, 2015

Audra Kunkle likes creepy stuff, and it shows. Her stores Loved To Death and LTD are teeming with some of the weirdest items you can find on the Haight, or anywhere else in the city. She was the star of her own reality TV show a few years back, and although she doesn't make as much of the jewelry in the shop as she used to, she continues to hock strange and fascinating items to countless customers to this day.

This week, we sat down with Kunkle to talk shop about taxidermy, the Victorian era, and mortality in a very special interview just in time for the spookiest part of the year.


Where are you from, and when did you land in The Bay?

I'm from LA originally, and then I came here in '98, I believe it was. I did the band/bartending thing. I feel like I really grew up in San Francisco, it's where I started doing things with my life, kind of. Then I moved back down to LA for five years, missed SF terribly and I actually started the business in LA, online. Then it started taking off online ... I was burned out on LA so I came back and really had no intentions of opening a business. I was just continuing it in my home studio with a website.

What was the business, exactly?

I started out making taxidermy jewelry and art. Dioramas and all the taxidermy jewelry, that was great for a while, but a lot of people started doing it, so I started branching out a little more and collecting antiques and adding those to the website. That took off. We were living in Alameda, coming to San Francisco and walking the Haight and I met the woman who had the lease on the space I'm in now. Long story short, she invited me in to a co-op situation in the store, which was called Neda's Flowers and Gifts. That was in 2008, I believe.

I basically started in the tiny corner that is now our register area. That was my entire store, and there were so many people squeezing in there that I was like 'Okay, this could really be something'. I really loved what I was doing, and I still do. So as people moved on out of the space, I would just take over there space and eventually I ended up with the whole lease.


And that's when you changed the name of the store? When was that?

Yes, and that was five years ago. November 1st, 2010.

How did you get into making this kind of jewelry? Why taxidermy?

I was working in a store in LA that sold a lot of natural history items and Victoriana and I became fascinated with Victorians and the way they made jewelry ... mainly the way they used human teeth and human hair in jewelry as mementos, and that kind of sparked everything for me. I tried to make everything have a Victorian feel to it, but I was surrounded with natural history so I had all these animal parts that I had access to, and that's basically how I started making taxidermy jewelry.

... how Victorians used hair and teeth in their jewelry?

Prince Albert always had their children's baby teeth made into really finely-crafted gemstone jewelry.

Wow!

Yeah, he had jewelry made that was just epic, but it was with teeth and weird things like that. He would use elk teeth for some of the pieces that he had actually hunted himself. He had each tooth engraved, and yeah, that was really fascinating for me, and also the fact that now people collect their kid's baby teeth and they don't know what to do with them. Human tooth jewelry is something that goes back to the Victorian era. So that kind of what started it all for me, the teeth and then the taxidermy and then it kind of just melded into something else.

Like a gateway drug.

Yeah, a gateway drug to making art!


You were featured on your own TV show, called Oddities: San Francisco. Could you tell us a little bit about that experience?

It was an interesting experience. It was basically just customers coming to us looking for a certain item, and then we would go out and source the item for them, so it took us into many collectors' homes. We got to see a lot of collections. We got to expose a lot of collections of people that shop in the store as well. We also found a lot of really weird items for people. 

Was there anything you disliked about the experience?

Honestly, the fame. 

Why?

I'm a reclusive-type person and more so now. You look at me and think I like attention because I have tattoos, like 'what do you mean you don't like attention?', but I don't like attention. That part's been a little bit difficult, but the people are always really nice. I do love the kids that come in that have seen the show, because it's kind of like an educational show and they get really excited, and the adults get excited as well. It's brought a different element into the store for sure.


Why are people so drawn to the occult?

I think it's definitely something that is perceived as very mysterious and secretive when it's really not. It's just research and being fascinated with things that are a little more obscure than the norm. I mean the occult is somewhat taboo, and a lot of people gravitate toward things that they're not 'supposed' to and find an interest in it.


Do you believe in the supernatural?

That's a tricky one because I didn't, but I've seen a few things in my time that have made me kind of wonder. People swear the upstairs of the store is haunted.

Really?

Yeah, I've heard many people tell me the same story, where we have a gentleman that was an accountant or a bookkeeper up there and he's trapped and he can't get out. I've had mediums offer to come and let him out. I've had people come, and then they'll come again in a year and be like, 'he's still up there, you know that right?' I mean I've never experienced anything. Things do fly off the walls up there occasionally. So we've had a few employees freak out  about that, and there are a few spots in the store that tend to have weird things happen, like things fall of the shelf for no reason, the same shelf all the time.


Do you think an item has the ability to bring good things or bad things to people? Do you think curses are real?

I do believe that you can curse somebody. I mean I believe in the power of spirituality and using it for positivity and negativity. 

Do you think any of the items that you sell bring with them any sort of supernatural powers?

I think people really want them to. I think that there have been possibly been a few things, I'd have to think back. There have been a few things where everybody couldn't wait until it was out of the store. It's usually the normal things, like ventriloquist dummies. People get super freaked out by those.

Interesting.

They're old, somebody loved that thing a lot, talked through it, used it as their voice. I don't know if that has anything to do with it, but people get really freaked out.


Are you afraid of death?

I've always had a fear of people close to me dying, because I dealt with that at a very young age, but me myself, no I don't think about it. I just keep going about what I'm doing and I don't worry about dying. I worry about my dog dying, but I don't worry about myself dying.


You opened LTD next door last October. What else is next?

The shop literally might as well be in another neighborhood—it takes that much to run it, so we're still adjusting to having two stores. We're upping our web presence. We have a website, we're trying to make that more built up. As far as what's next, we're just making everything better and better. Sourcing more and more weird items and trying to keep the store as original as possible, which is a constant challenge with this city because it's so small. When I see other people carrying things I'm carrying, I'll a lot of times shift gears and try to find other things, so it's just a constant challenge for me, which is something I thrive in, finding things that are unique that people want that you don't see everywhere. That's kind of my forte.

Swing by Loved to Death (1681 Haight) and LTD (1685 Haight) for a taste of what's on offer, just in time for Halloween.