Frances Bean Has a Creepy Doll Made With Locks of Kurt Cobain's Hair

Two items belonging to Kurt Cobain were put on auction Monday—the vintage cardigan he wore on MTV Unplugged in 1993 (starting bid: $25,000) and a small lock of his hair (starting bid: $4000). Buried in the lot description, though, was a much more important bit of news: Frances Bean has a creepy doll made with locks of her father’s hair.

Accompanying the auction for KURT COBAIN LOCK OF HAIR (approximately 10 inches), memorabilia site Julien’s Auctions writes:

A lock of Kurt Cobain’s hair given to doll maker and comic artist Dame Darcy by Courtney Love. In a comic book style letter of authenticity, Darcy explains that in the 1990s she sold her handmade dolls in the back of her comic book Meat Cake. Love became a client and commissioned a doll for her daughter Frances using Cobain’s hair. This lock was the hair that remained once the doll was made. Accompanied by both a black and white and inked copy of the letter of authenticity.

Dame Darcy’s Meatcake was an early staple of alt comics and graphic novels, elaborately drawn with Victorian gothic undertones and otherwise spooky, pretty witchery. In recent years her evil dolls have become more elaborate and terrifying, but in the 1990s they were slightly more rudimentary and elongated, like these. (Appropriately enough: her band is called Death by Doll.) While we could not find evidence of Frances’s Kurt-haired doll online, Darcy and Courtney Love were clearly friends. Here is a video of the duo making evil dolls together in 1997, which Darcy references in her comic of authenticity.

The 1990s were an era in which plastic doll heads with the eyes blacked out were standard punk home decor, but this is not that. Here is the part of the video in which they explain how Darcy gets the hair to make her dolls.

Here is the part where Courtney and Darcy take a break to just play with the dolls. The ‘90s were a different time.

In the conclusion, the doll Darcy has been making is baked.

In Dame Darcy’s letter of authenticity accompanying Cobain’s hair, she writes, “2 decades later I did a visual meditation picturing myself as a mermaid finding gold in a treasure chest… I rediscovered Kurt’s golden hair in a secret forgotten compartment of my great grandma’s jewelry box.” And now you, too, could become this mermaid, for just five to ten thousand dollars. But Frances Bean’s creepy doll… that is priceless.