The Cabinets of Curiosity

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how cabinets of curiosity (also known as wunderkammer, cabinets of wonder, and wonder rooms ), were rooms that housed vast encyclopaedic collections of objects and other rare items of interest. These proto museums were the private collections of elite upper classes; English gentleman, scholars and aristocrats. It looks at how they were considered a heterogeneous theatre of learning and pleasure where by human creativity was arranged on natural forms in its exploration for beauty and wonder.

From the Paper:

"With the discovery of the Americas and the New World, wealthy collectors would send off explorers and sailors with a 'shopping list' of curiosities that would demonstrate their interests and obsessions. Many objects would have a monetary value however most collectors had little interest in this aspect instead they focussed more on the passion for collecting and the joy of ownership, such as Ulisse Aldrovandi, a collector in the latter part of the 16th century, and indeed by 1549 Aldrovandi had over 100 collections in Rome itself. Other types of collectors existed who began to profit from these curiosities. 17th century German merchant Philipp Hainhofer is a prime example of this profiteering. He acted as buying agent for collectors of luxury items but also acquired objects from Frankfurt fairs, a long way from his home of Augsburg. He would create his own cabinet of curiosity with these newly acquired items with the view of selling them, no doubt as the highest bidder, as a complete cabinet of curiosity."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Evans, RJ.W. Marr, A. Curiosity and wonder from the renaissance to the enlightenment. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2006. p10.
• Swann, M. Curiosities and texts: The culture of collecting in early modern England. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. p1.
• Levy Peck, L. Consuming splendor: Society and culture in seventeenth-century England. Cambridge University Press. 2005. p162
• Feola, V. Elias Ashmole and the Uses of antiquity. PhD Thesis 2005. Department of History, University of London. Expert Information Ltd
• Williams C. Thomas Platter's travels in England 1599. London: J Cape. 1937. p106, 159, 160, 170, 171, 201-3, 215.

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