By David Leggett | 1st June 2018
'Unicorn' tusks’, a stuffed crocodile and treasures from foreign lands; these are just some of the items you might find in a ‘cabinet of curiosity’. The term translates from the early French for 'reading/study room of curiosities or wonders' – in German 'Wunderkammer' – literally a room of wonders. Our natural history expert, David Leggett, explains how modern cabinets of curiosities evolved from these rooms of wonder and how you can create your own today.
From Wunderkammer to Cabinet
The first record of a cabinet of curiosity comes from an image from 1599, the engraving in Ferrante Imperato's Dell'Historia Naturale. From that moment on, the Wunderkammer became increasingly popular as the world fell under the spell of early science. Amateur and professional anatomists and explorers were eager to show a hungry-for-knowledge public the natural wonders surrounding them: exotic birds, mammals, insects and reptiles, human organs and skeletons, fossil remains and treasures of the deep such as corals and crustaceans. Sometimes the weird and wonderful became a bit more fantastical when the people behind the cabinets presented what they believed to be a ‘unicorn horn’, which turned out to be the tusk of a narwhal.
'Musei Wormiani Historia' shows Ole Worm's cabinet of curiosities
One of the most famous seventeenth century cabinets was the one of Ole Worm, an Aarhus surgeon and all-round student of the natural sciences. He assembled a great collection of curiosities, ranging from native artefacts collected from the New World, to taxidermy and fossils. In time he compiled engravings of the collection, along with his speculations about their meaning, into a catalogue of his Museum Wormianum, published after his death in 1654. The engravings give proper meaning to the term Wunderkammer. Ole was also the owner of a rather unusual pet: the now extinct great auk. His illustration of the great auk is the only known illustration of a live member of the species.
Ole Wormius’ Great Auk
During the Victorian and Edwardian eras, the cabinets of curiosities became no longer the prerogative of the learned or the scientist – well-travelled, well-off gentlemen were keen to show off their ‘knowledge’ and experience by arranging such displays in their large country and town houses. As the fad grew, the size of the displays shrank.
Nowadays the nearest we can come to a true Wunderkammer is probably our local natural history museums, or better still, our national museums, such as the UK’s Natural History Museum in London, or the wonderful Museum of Leiden in the Netherlands. Paris’ Deyrolle Museum, privately owned by Louis Albert de Broglie, publicises itself as just one such “cabinet”, or “show case”, with its fascinating, eclectic collection of all of nature’s wonders.
Left: Natural History Museum in Leiden. Right: 18th century cabinet of curiosities
The phrase 'cabinet of curiosities' has nowadays come to mean just that: a cabinet, a set of storage drawers or shelves, displaying a mix of scientific diversity – bottled reptiles, skulls and skeletons, exotica and taxidermy. Today’s cabinets can be stored in the smallest of spaces. So long as the principle of eclectic collection remains true, the humblest of shelves can pride itself on the title.
- So long as the principle of eclectic collection remains true, the humblest of shelves can pride itself on the title.
- Image source: Cobbe Collection
Catawiki’s Natural History auctions, especially the monthly Cabinet of Curiosity auction, offer the collector an easy way to build such a collection. Each month this auction lists a plethora of the quirky, the unusual and the unexpected – from mermaid ‘foetuses’ to living fossils such as deep sea Arthropods (Giant Marine Woodlice); from replica shrunken heads to bottled crocodiles….it’s all there.
Left: Vintage three-toed Sloth, full body mount. Right: Bottle-preserved Specimens - with species labels - leech, lizard and nematode worms
From 1st to 10th June, we host a special private curiosity auction will be held entitled Jansen’s Wunderkammer, offering a selection of mostly antique pieces – exotic New World monkeys, spiny spider crabs, armadillo and monitor lizard – and for the more curious, bottle-preserved blood-sucking leeches, ringworms, sponges and baby caiman. This auction is surely one not to miss!
Discover more fossils | taxidermy | cabinets
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