If you've already seen the new Frankenstein – directed by Guillermo del Toro and available on Netflix from November 7th – you've probably seen cockroaches, insects, or human hearts and naturally thought of them as simple and normal props: but in cinema, as we know, everything is fiction. What you saw, in reality, could have been a tasty Belgian chocolate treat. In the peaceful English countryside of East Anglia, in fact, a real "chocolatier of horror" creates delicious and, at the same time, disturbing chocolates: her name is Sarah Hardy, founder of the so-called Edible Museum.
When Chocolate Becomes a Work of Art… But Horror
It's almost hard to imagine a prop being made of chocolate, especially when it comes to insects or even human organs. Yet, the Mexican director was fortunate to find a pastry chef who dedicates her life to just this: Sarah Hardy creates bones, feet, cockroaches, brains, skulls, and toads every day with exquisite Belgian chocolate. Two concepts that couldn't be further apart, yet when you look at them, they blend together perfectly, incredibly fascinating for horror fans and beyond.
Now, all her skill and experience have flowed directly into the new film adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel: "I threw myself into it headfirst and got carried away by the enthusiasm. Guillermo Del Toro? Making chocolates for a gothic horror film? Yes, please," she writes on the official website of her Edible Museum. A job, as Hardy herself explains, that didn't come about thanks to "friends in the right place" but solely because of the passion and commitment she's put into her work throughout her life.
This isn't the first project where her creations could find a place: in fact, there have been many proposals "but 90% of them didn't take off for one reason or another". But now, finally, it's a reality and for the latest adaptation of Frankenstein, Sarah had to prepare "special chocolate beetles, in a very specific color palette and also a good supply of hearts": an absolutely bizarre but extraordinarily intriguing request.
Sarah Hardy and Her "Edible Museum"
The first thing that comes to mind is that, in everything related to this project, absolutely nothing is as it seems. Yes, because not only do you end up with animals, feet, and brains that, fortunately, are not real, but the Edible Museum isn't even a museum. It's an online shop that was born both, as you might guess, from a passion for horror, but above all from Sarah's studies. Specializing in sculpture, her passion for historical artifacts began at a young age, in her mother's antique shop, where she spent her days. Syringes, empty medicine vials, dentures, and wigs were an inexhaustible source of curiosity for her: "Even a fragment of a 17th-century clay pipe found in a field fascinated me as a child, because it was a little piece of history. I think my mother's antique shop made me curious about the provenance of each object," she writes on her website.
After studying sculpture at the Norwich School of Art and earning a Master's in Critical Fine Art Practice from Goldsmiths, she began creating wax statues for international museums. But once she became pregnant, she realized she could no longer use the chemicals she used at work because they were harmful to the baby's health: hence the idea of food art, which later materialized in the Edible Museum. Her background as a sculptor, however, allows her to make her own molds for her sweets, creating what can be considered true works of art, to sell to horror fans… and chocolate lovers.
;Resize,width=767;)
