Original Cabinet Card - CC223 Family Portrait with Shrunken Head Man

Colin is an artist from Manchester, England. He has worked on countless cool projects including Tim Burton's Mars Attacks, the Oscar nominated short The Sandman, Eddie Murphy's The PJ's, and many, many more. He sculpted the original Halcyon model kits of the Alien, the Predator, and the Queen Alien. He also has sculpted for Critterbox toys. Colin has contributed to Freakybuttrue and the Peculiarium for many years and graces this site with his amazing work. Here, he hand-paints acrylic details onto vintage cabinet cards, often with a single-hair brush.

Meet the Picklesnort family of Rolla, North Dakota: proud homesteaders, amateur ventriloquists, and staunch advocates for “equal seating, regardless of cranial volume.” Youngest son Norbert (bottom center) was cursed—or blessed, depending on the lighting—with a rare condition known as Microcephalus Battyus, or “Teacup Noggin Syndrome.”

Despite his reduced head real estate, Norbert was a prodigious thinker. By age seven, he had memorized the entire Farmer’s Almanac and drafted an early prototype for Wi-Fi (which, at the time, relied heavily on pigeons). His family, fiercely proud, insisted he sit front and center—lest anyone mistake him for a ventriloquist dummy or a traveling curiosity.

The photograph was taken moments before Norbert levitated two inches off the ground and declared that the moon was, in fact, hollow and full of beetles.

Archival prints of this original cabinet card available HERE.