Dressed flea market
10th January 2024
As examples of folk art go, it could be argued to be one of the more extreme and has even been described by past practitioners as “exquisite but useless”, but dressed fleas remain a collectable curiosity to this day.
The practice of dressing fleas is believed to have been started by Mexican nuns during the 19th century, and later became a way of making money from visiting tourists.
Now five of this miniature sets have found their way onto the UK market at Salisbury auction house, Woolley and Wallis.
“I’ve heard of these sets before, but this is the first time we’ve actually handled any,” said Works of Art specialist, Mark Yuan-Richards. “They’re incredibly intricate for something so tiny and have already drawn a lot of interest from people. They really have to be seen to be believed.”
Pulgas vestidas, as the fleas are known in Mexico, were still being made into the 1930s and a few sets are kept in museums, with Oxford’s Museum of Natural History owning five sets. A social media poll on the favourite artefact at the museum saw the tiny exhibits romp home with nearly 54% of the vote.
“The sets would have come to the UK via tourists who acquired them in Mexico, but they are so tiny and delicate that it is no surprise that few examples have survived,” continued Yuan-Richards. “They would have appealed as a curiosity, especially to the late Victorians, who had an obsession with anthropomorphism – animals or objects with human characteristics.”
The fleas were often mounted in pairs, either a bride and groom or a Mexican farmer and his wife. However, larger sets are recorded that included full mariachi bands. The sets coming up at Woolley and Wallis on 18th January are mostly of farming couples.
The estimate for the sets is £500-800 but Mark Yuan-Richards says they could fetch more. “Because these are such rare survivals, very few examples are recorded at auction. Some sets in the US are known to have fetched several thousand pounds, but they are a very esoteric area of collecting. Certainly whoever buys them can rest assured that they will own something that nobody else does and will be guaranteed a talking point for years to come.”
