Natural Curiosity: Inside Esoterica's World of Specimens & Storytelling
Esoterica founder Sofia reflects on how a childhood spent collecting the natural world became a lifelong devotion to preserving its beauty
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
It starts earlier than we think. Perhaps it's a feather discovered on a morning walk or a mushroom tucked beneath fallen leaves. Or, maybe it's a smooth stone slipped into a coat pocket simply because it was too interesting to leave behind. Long before those moments become collections, career paths or carefully curated spaces, they begin as simple curiosity.
For Esoterica co-founder Sofia, that curiosity first took shape alongside her grandmother in the forests of Russia, where afternoons were spent outside in nature, learning about flora, fauna and the personality of places. Years later, those early lessons found a new home in New Hope, Pennsylvania where Esoterica invites visitors to rediscover the same sense of wonder that first inspired its founders to begin collecting.
In our conversation, Sofia reflects on how childhood curiosity became a shop devoted to preserving the natural world.
Another Chapter: Soul Perchers on the Care Behind Every Creation
Some artists work with canvas. Others work with marble, clay or paint. The Soul Perchers team works with legacy. Every stitch is sewn by hand. Every garment is designed with the care of a historical costumer. Most importantly, every animal is treated with profound dignity, preserving a life that deserves to be remembered.
There is a palpable tenderness at the heart of this shop. Before the velvet, antique lace and jewelled crowns, there is an unwavering belief that every animal, every soul, deserves compassion. That philosophy guides each decision the team makes, from sourcing only ethical specimens to allowing each creature to inspire its character.
Inspired by Victorian dress, the visual language of Guillermo del Toro and Tim Burton, art history, fashion and fairy tales, their anthropomorphic taxidermy transforms each specimen into a character with a story of its own. Each finished piece grants an animal's story another chapter.
We sat down with the team to find out more.
Afterlife: 15 Natural History Artists to Know
From traditional taxidermy to lace bats designs, the intricate handwork of these artists give each creature another chapter
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
A butterfly seemingly paused mid-flight allows us to appreciate the intricate patterns across its wings. The preserved vertebrae of a snake reveal the elegant architecture that once supported its movement. Even the familiar raccoon becomes newly arresting when we pause to notice the dexterity of its paws or the intelligence held in its expression.
These details can pass in an instant while an animal is alive and in motion. Natural history art gives us time to see them. The artist looks closely at what made each creature singular, then considers how its character might be carried forward translating its unique essence through the passages of time.
That transformation demands an extraordinary kind of devotion. Each specimen is studied closely before the artist begins the patient work of preserving its form. Even pieces rendered in lace or traced from abandoned spiderwebs carry the same attention to the architecture of the living world.
The 15 artists featured here pour themselves into giving each creature another chapter. Through their work, nature becomes an enduring object of wonder and an invitation to look closer at the life around us.
Content warning: The following article contains images of finished taxidermy pieces. Readers who prefer not to view preserved animals should stop here.
Bed of Roses: Gothic Botanical Décor for the Boudoir
Cultivate a dreamier space with decadent florals, insect motifs and garden-inspired details
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
Close the bedroom door and the garden begins to stir. Night-blooming flowers spill across the bed, velvet pillows deepen the shadows and vines curl around lampshades glowing like rare specimens beneath glass. The air carries traces of rose, jasmine and damp earth as moths, beetles and serpents emerge among the foliage.
Inside the botanical boudoir, nature feels slightly untamed. Rich textiles invite you to sink deeper beneath the covers, while every framed flower and winged creature rewards a closer look. Together, it becomes a seductive secret garden designed for darkly romantic escape.
Dark Delicacies: 13 Gothic Food Brands to Fill Your Pantry
From your morning coffee to your favourite hot sauce, these gothic brands make everyday essentials a little more menacing
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
Your grocery list probably already includes coffee, tea, hot sauce or the occasional sweet treat. If you're looking to swap a few everyday staples without changing your routine, these gothic brands are a fun place to start.
Whether you're brewing your first cup of coffee, reaching for a favourite seasoning or satisfying a sweet tooth, these gothic brands bring a little personality to the everyday while supporting the small businesses that embrace a darker aesthetic.
Dark Roast: 13 Gothic Mugs We Covet
When the caffeine craving calls
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
There comes a point each morning when resistance becomes futile. The percolating coffee pot calls to you, your thirst impossible to ignore. From delightfully macabre to playfully peculiar, these gothic finds bring a little extra character to every cup.
Shelf (After)Life: 11 Gothic Cookbooks to Collect
From witchcraft and herbalism to haunted baking and literary cocktails, these beautifully curated cookbooks deserve a permanent place in your kitchen
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
An exceptional cookbook does more than tell you what to make for dinner. It teaches, inspires and occasionally sends you down an internet rabbit hole over an unfamiliar ingredient or centuries-old tradition. These are the gorgeous gothic titles we'd happily read from cover to cover—even if we never turned on the oven.
Ritual Kitchen Recipe: The Welcome Home Vanilla Chai Loaf Spell
By Laura May
This vanilla chai loaf is infused with warm, cosy spices, creating a welcoming atmosphere for a home or a space in need of comfort. Baking with intention, especially when working towards creating a happy home, can help manifest peace and prosperity.
It’s the reason I found my narrowboat home, and I bake it once a year to keep my space sacred and filled with joy.
As you prepare this cake, focus on your wishes for your home, symbolising a safe, nurturing environment for all who dwell within it.
Laura May's Recipe for Kitchen Magic
Inside the pages of Kitchen Magic: Over 65 Enchanting Recipes and Rituals for a Cozy, Witchy Kitchen and the stories that inspired them
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
It's easy to forget where our food comes from when most of us move through at least one meal each day on autopilot. Breakfast between emails. Lunch at our desks. Dinner in front of the television. Laura May, cookbook author and creator of @lauramayritualkitchen invites us to slow down, reconnecting with seasonality (and the harvests seasons yield) and rediscovering the folklore hidden in the ingredients we enjoy every day.
Laura shares her favourite summer kitchen witch ingredients for everything from allergy remedies and herbal teas to midsummer menus, seasonal rituals and the meals that carry us from breakfast through supper, along with the meanings behind the ingredients.
Sip Your Way Through Summer with Paige Comrie
From patio pours to travel-inspired bottles, @winewithpaige shares how to find the right bottle, pair it well and enjoy every last drop
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
The world of wine can feel like an exclusive club, guarded by an impenetrable velvet rope and scary bouncer. Paige Comrie is that friend who’s always on the list and waves you through like you’ve belonged all along. She welcomes you in, pours the glass and makes it all feel within reach.
Her approach doesn’t rely on jargon or ceremony. It’s grounded in curiosity, built through experience and shaped by a genuine interest in the glass and the story it carries with it. A Sauvignon Blanc can take you to New Zealand. A chilled red can shift the tone of a summer table. The right pairing can turn a simple meal into something especially memorable.
Paige introduces wine as a passport, to different worlds and regions alike, sharing how to choose a bottle without second-guessing, how to pair it in a way that makes sense, and even what to do when a spill threatens to leave a mark.
Tales from the Crib: Three Delightfully Dark Gothic Baby Shower Themes
Spooky themes to celebrate the arrival of your little creature of the night
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
The door opens and the room settles into focus. Inky-black bats circle overhead as if they chose the place themselves, while a drift of small ghosts lingers at shoulder height, hovering like names waiting to be called. A cauldron holds at a patient boil in the corner, as though someone stepped away mid-incantation and never rushed back. It reads unmistakably gothic, a dark sensibility carried through every touchpoint with complete conviction.
Then the conversation turns to the expectant heroine at the centre of it all. Spooky is a spectrum. Weird leans whimsical. Fangs, it turns out, can be family friendly.
We cordially invite you to consider three goth-coded interpretations, each one designed to welcome a new arrival without asking the parent-to-be to soften her aesthetic.
Mother’s Day, the Gothic Way: Hosting Guide
Three atmospheric Mother’s Day celebrations that invite a darker palette and a little bit of mischief
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
Motherhood produces many archetypes. Some wear linen and host polite patio brunches. Others keep antique silver beside tarot decks and charge their silly little rocks by moonlight.
This guide was written for the latter.
We’ve built three interpretations of the day, each one drawn from a different expression of dark feminine energy. The mood leads. The table follows. Music, menu, and gifts fall into place from there.
Brunch carries black cat energy. The afternoon drifts toward a cemetery picnic and a long spring walk. Dinner moves outdoors, set against cool evening air and early blooms, with candles marking the hour as it arrives.
Three ways to celebrate. All of them feel like her.
On the Hunt With Chloe Hurst: Black Blooms & Botanicals
@theg0thgarden’s shares how to source and grow a goth garden at home
By: The Lace Ledger
Chloe Hurst’s garden has the kind of effect that stops you in your tracks; it’s absolutely incredible. The sheer volume of dark blooms, unusual foliage and inky texture feels almost unreal, as though someone brought to life gothic daydream and planted it at full scale.
It’s truly gorgeous. Exceptional, really. For a novice gardener, it is also slightly intimidating. The first reaction is admiration, closely followed by the suspicion that a garden like this belongs to someone with more time, more knowledge and a greenhouse full of secrets.
Chloe is refreshingly practical on that front. Below, she graciously breaks the process down step by step, walking us through bringing to life a goth garden of our own from planning the space, which plants make the best starting point, where to shop and even what fertilizer to reach for once things begin to grow.
So, we asked Chloe to start at the beginning.
In the Garden After Dusk with @briannas_planttok
Dark foliage, medicinal botanicals, poison garden lore and the passion behind Brianna’s homestead practice
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
All day, the garden blooms in broad, sun-filled strokes, standing proud and tall, admired by passers by and onlooking neighbours.
As the sunsets, and the air cools, the noise of the day drops away until only small sounds remain; leaves dancing in the wind, something distant calling from the trees. This is the call of the garden that resounds most authentically with Brianna. Not at daybreak, but in the hours when the garden feels most like itself: a mythical, meditative place for grounding, cultivation and self-reflection.
Here, we step into her world after dusk, where the world slows, the rhythm steadies and the garden reveals what it’s been doing all along.
The Dark Feminine Easter Table: Three Indulgent Gothic Easter Fantasies
Three immersive spring concepts that turn Easter into a darkly aesthetic experience
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
There was a time when Easter arrived in a wash of sugared pastels and cellophane-wrapped anticipation, when wicker baskets waited at the edge of the dining table and the air carried the faint perfume of tulips just beginning to open. We remember the softness of velvet ears stitched onto toy rabbits, the thrill of egg hunts staged across damp spring lawns, the polite chaos of chocolate smudged across small hands before brunch had even begun. There were painted shells drying on newspaper, lilies standing upright in glass vases, tables set for mid-morning feasts that felt ceremonial in their own gentle way.
That tenderness still belongs to us. The sweetness does not disappear simply because our taste has sharpened or our palette has darkened. Nostalgia is foundational, just rendered in a different font.
This guide gathers those memories carefully and lowers the lights. We’ve curated three immersive hosting concepts reinterpret the rabbits, the florals, the food, the games and the promise of spring through a dark feminine lens that feels aligned with a soft goth aesthetic. Each table calls back to childhood memory while embracing mood and depth, allowing you to honour the girl who once reached for foil-wrapped chocolate even as you curate a gathering that reflects the woman you have become.
Hauntingly Atmospheric Bridal Shower Themes for the Gothic Bride
Three immersive celebrations inspired by dark fairytales, swanlike devotion and poison-laced afternoon tea
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
A bridal shower has long been framed as a polite afternoon of porcelain and pleasantries, yet tradition becomes far more compelling when filtered through a dark feminine lens.
For the gothic bride, refinement does not require pastel dilution; it invites darkly romantic atmosphere and a sense of myth woven quietly through sensory-driven touches. When the lace and florals darken, the formality remains intact while the aesthetic shifts to something far more aligned to the taste of alternative brides.
This is the bridal shower reimagined, not as a departure from custom, but as an elevation of it.
Monsters, Music & Matrimony: A Goth Engagement Party Guide
From grand hotel bars to neon dive bars, here how to host a celebration that rings true
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
An engagement party does more than announce a date; it establishes the emotional architecture of everything that follows. The way you gather now becomes the first chapter of your wedding narrative, which is why the tone should feel unmistakably yours.
When a celebration honours the texture of your love story—whether that means castle corridors, operatic grandeur, or a leather-warmed dive bar—guests sense the authenticity and rise to the occasion. Even the relative who would never set foot in a dive bar under normal circumstances may find herself swaying beneath neon lights, because enthusiasm expands in the presence of conviction.
Set the mood authentically and, often, your community will be delighted to celebrate in a style that feels true.
Before the Veil Falls: A Dark Feminine Bachelorette Party Edit
Three atmospheric themes for the dark feminine bride-to-be from medieval revelry and disgraced socialite chaos to modern witchy mischief
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
A bachelorette party is not merely a farewell to single life; it is a ritual threshold crossing. For the dark feminine bride-to-be, the night should honouring the woman she has been as fiercely as the partner she is about to become.
Whether that energy manifests in torchlit medieval revelry, scandal-laced socialite abandon, or spellbound city witchcraft, the celebration should pulse with atmosphere. This is the final revel before forever settles in, which means it deserves mood, mischief and a touch of myth.
For the Dark at Heart: A Gothic Wedding Hosting Guide
Three immersive ceremony and reception concepts for couples who prefer candlelight to confetti
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
A wedding is often frame in soft focus. White linen. Champagne. Polite joy.
And that works for some people.
But, if you move through the world in a darker register, that version of tradition can feel a little uncomfy.
If conventional weddings feel like someone else’s story, this may feel more like home. We’ve curated three immersive concepts for couples looking for a celebration with a greater depth of atmosphere (and colour palette).
The Goth Galentine’s Day Playbook
Three goth-coded ways to host the women who hold you steady
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
Galentine’s Day doesn’t need to look like pink confetti to feel celebratory. Sometimes, it looks like a dimly lit table, a haunting playlist and the kind of laughter that only happens when you’re surrounded by women who know the real you <3. This is a holiday for chosen family, for the friendships that hold you steady and gatherings to remember.
If your circle skews darkly inclined, these Galentine’s themes may feel more authentic. Cocktails + Conjuring, Volume Up and Notes in the Margin off three distinct moods for celebrating the wonderful women in your life, your riders, each rooted in connection and shaped by a shared aesthetic that doesn’t need to explain itself.