Cabinets of Curiosities
(also known as Wunderkammer or wonder-rooms) were collections of types of objects we now regard as quite separate, but whose boundaries were in the Renaissance yet to be defined. They included specimens we would now categorise as belonging to natural history (sometimes faked), geology, ethnography, archaeology, religious or historical relics, works of art, including cabinet paintings, and antiquities. Some belonged to rulers, aristocrats or merchants, others to early practitioners of science in Europe, and were precursors to museums of different sorts.
The term cabinet originally described a room rather than a piece of furniture. Two of the most famously described 17th century cabinets were those of Ole Worm (also known as Olaus Wormius) (1588-1654), and Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680). These 17th-century cabinets were filled with preserved animals, horns, tusks, skeletons, minerals, and other types of objects. Often they would contain a mix of fact and fiction, including apparently mythical creatures. Worm's collection contained, for example, what he thought was a Scythian Lamb, a wooly fern thought to be a plant/sheep fabulous creature. However he was also responsible for identifying the narwhal's tusk as coming from a whale rather than a unicorn, as most owners of these believed. The specimens displayed were often collected during exploring expeditions and trading voyages.
Cabinets of curiosities would often serve scientific advancement when images of their contents were published. The catalog of Worm's collection, published as the Museum Wormianum (1655), used the collection artifacts as a starting point for Worm's speculations on philosophy, science, natural history, and more.
In 1587 Gabriel Kaltemarckt advised Christian I of Saxony that three types of item were indispensable in forming a "Kunstkammer" or art collection: firstly sculptures and paintings; secondly "curious items from home or abroad"; and thirdly "antlers,horns, claws, feathers and other things belonging to strange and curious animals" [1] When Albrecht Dürer visted the Netherlands in 1521, apart from artworks he sent back to Nuremberg various animal horns, a piece of coral, some large fish fins and a wooden weapon from the East Indies.[2]
"Male Narwhal or Unicorn", here still with his tuskThe Ashmolean Museum in Oxford inherited the collection of Elias Ashmole, itself largely derived from John Tradescant the elder and his son John Tradescant the younger. Parts of this are still displayed together, giving a good sense of the diversity of these collections. What was left of the famous and unique complete stuffed Dodo was passed to the new Pitt Rivers Museum in the nineteenth century. An important Native American artifact, Chief Powhatan's Mantle, the cloak of the father of Pocohontas, remains in the collection.
Obviously cabinets of curiosities were limited to those who could afford to create and maintain them. Many monarchs, in particular, developed large collections. A rather under-used example, stronger in art than other areas, was the Studiolo of Francesco I, the first Medici Grand-Duke of Tuscany. Frederick III of Denmark, who added Worm's collection to his own after Worm's death, was another such monarch. A third example is the Kunstkamera founded by Peter the Great in Saint Petersburg in 1727. The fabulous Hapsburg Imperial collection, included important Aztec artifacts, including the feather head-dress or crown of Montezuma now in the Museum of Ethnology, Vienna.
Similar collections on a smaller scale were the complex Kunstschränke produced in the early 17th century by the Augsburg merchant, diplomat and collector Philipp Hainhofer. These were cabinets in the sense of pieces of furniture, made from all imaginable exotic and expensive materials and filled with contents and ornamental details intended to reflect the entire cosmos on a miniature scale. The best preserved example is the one given by the city of Augsburgto King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden in 1632, which is kept in the Museum Gustavianum in Uppsala.
In Los Angeles, California, the modern-day Museum of Jurassic Technology anachronistically seeks to recreate the sense of wonder that the old cabinets of curiosity once aroused. See Weschler book below.
This idea of a cabinet of curiosities has been drawn from in recent publications and performances. Cabinet magazine is a quarterly magazine of cultural artifacts and obscure historical footnotes. Internet blogger Jason Kottke describes his popular site as a wunderkammer, as it is comprised primarily of links to things that are interesting. Cabinet of Natural Curiosities (band), a Brooklyn-based folk/experimental music and art collective named after Albertus Seba's collection of oddities, has released eclectic folk and improvisational albums based on the idea of the wunderkammer, as well as staging a performance of the Theater of Natural Curiosities at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, New York. (From Wikapebia- Cabinets of Curiosities)
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