Cabinet of curiosities
Cabinets of curiosities (also known as wonder-rooms) were collections of natural history artifacts kept by many early practitioners of science in Europe, and were pre-cursors to natural history museums.
Two of the most famously described cabinets were those of Ole Worm and Athanasius Kircher, both 17th century cabinets (actually room sized collections) 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 what he thought was a Scythian lamb, for example, a wooly fern thought to be a plant/sheep fabulous creature. They were often displays of specimens 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, and many monarchs in particular developed large collections, such as Frederick III of Denmark, who added Worm's collection to his own after Worm's death.
In Los Angeles, California, the modern-day Museum of Jurassic Technology anachronistically seeks to recreate the sense of wonder that the old cabinets of curiousity once aroused.
Notable collections started in this way
External links
- Smithsonian: "Crocodiles on the Ceiling" (http://www.sil.si.edu/Exhibitions/wonderbound/crocodiles.htm)