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Cabinet of curiosities
Cabinets of curiosities (also known as wunderkammer or wonder-rooms) were collections of natural history artifacts kept by many early practitioners of science in Europe, and were precursors to natural history museums.
Two of the most famously described cabinets were those of Ole Worm (also known as Olaus Wormius) and Athanasius Kircher. These 17th-century cabinets, actually room-sized collections, were filled with preserved animals, horns, tusks, skeletons, minerals, and so on. 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. 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.
Obviously cabinets of curiosities were limited to those who could afford to create and maintain them. Many monarchs, in particular, developed large collections. Frederick III of Denmark, who added Worm's collection to his own after Worm's death, was one such monarch. Another example is the Kunstkamera founded by Peter the Great in Saint Petersburg in 1727.
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 literal cabinets 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 Augsburg to 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.
Cabinet of curiosities - Notable collections started in this way
- Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford in England)
- The Museum of Jurassic Technology
Medical oddities
See also
Other related archives1655, 17th-century, Athanasius Kircher, Augsburg, England, Europe, Frederick III of Denmark, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, Kunstkamera, Los Angeles, California, Medical oddities, Museum Gustavianum, Museum of Jurassic Technology, Ole Worm, Oxford, Peter the Great, Philipp Hainhofer, Pitt Rivers Museum, Saint Petersburg, The Museum of Jurassic Technology, Uppsala, fern, monarchs, museums, mythical, natural history, science
 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Cabinet of curiosities", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
