Why such odd collections? According to Lawrence Weschler, author of our favorite book, Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder,this European fascination with the strange and new arose from the discovery of the New World.
Weschler says, "The point is that for a good century and a half after the discovery of the Americas, Europe's mind was blown. That was the animating spirit behind, and the enduring significance of, the profusion of Wudnerkammern."
Bring me the horn of a . . . whatever!
A excerpt from a letter (again from Weschler's book) dated 1625 details a wish list of items the author wished the recipient to obtain for him in the New World:
on Ellophants head with the teeth In it very large
on River horsses head of the Bigest kind that can be gotton
on Seabulles head withe horns
All sorts of Serpents and Snakes Skines & Espetially of that sort that hathe a Combe on his head Lyke a Cock
All sorts of Shinging Stones or of Any Strange Shapes
And he concludes with:
Any thing that Is strang.
Cope's Castle
The Kensington castle of Sir Walter Cope, who was a politician and member of the Elizabethan College of Antiquaries, contained the following items: (as recorded in the 1599 diary of a Swiss visitor and quoted from Weschler's book, which in turn is quoting The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Europe.)
. . . holy relics from a Spanish ship Cope had helped to capture; earthen pitchers and porcelain from China; a Madonna made of feathers, a chain made of monkey teeth, stone shears, a back-scratcher, and a canoe with paddles, all from "India"; a Javanese costume, Arabian coats; the horn and tail of a rhinoceros, the horn of a bull seal, a round horn that had grown on an Englishwoman's forehead, a unicorn's tail; the baubles and bells of Henry VIII's fool, the Turkish emperor's golden seal . . .
Apples and . . . cats
Since wonder cabinets pre-dated Linnaeus's mid-eighteenth century taxonomic classification system, each collection sported its own unique organizational structure.
According to Weschler, the specimens in one corner of the Anatomical Museum in Leiden were grouped by type of defect. Sitting side by side were "separate pickling jars containing two-tailed lizards, doubled apples, conjoined Siamese twin infants, forked carrots, and a two-headed cat."
Weschler also notes that some collections were structured around a moralizing order. The Dutch were particularly fond of these moralizing tableaus which included the skeleton of a cattle thief mounted astride the skeleton of an ox; a skeletal Adam and Eve, with the woman's skeleton offering an apple; and banners above skeletons proclaiming the bones to be those of executed criminals.
The Dutch anatomist Frederick Ruysch was infamous for his startling dioramas composed of fetal skeletons and various human and animal body parts, including dried kidneys and gallstones. One little skeleton held a tiny violin whose bow was made from a dried artery. A more detailed description of Ruysch's handiwork can be found on pages 85-87 of Weschler's book.
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