1/2 Wondrous Obsessions: The Cabinet of Curiosities - Secret Knowledge

in 1638 a German visitor to London stumbled upon something marvellous behind the door of a perfectly ordinary house in Lambeth was a room that contained the entire world and some things beyond it there was a sea parrot a number of things changed a stone and a robe that once belonged to the father of Pocahontas this was John true desk ins cabinet of curiosities a place where you could see more strange and wonderful things in one room than if you devoted an entire lifetime to travel cabinets of curiosity were born out of a craze for collecting that crept Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries all those who could afford it filled their homes with a bewildering array of objects to impress and entertain their friends cabinets of curiosity have always fascinated me perhaps it's because of the time when as a fresh wide-eyed undergraduate at Oxford University jet-lagged homesick unused to the cold my new friends dragged me here to - Malian Museum and I found myself staring mesmerised at the very same array of curious that that German tourists had written about so many years ago john frieda seconds cabinet of curiosities would eventually become the Ashmolean the first purpose-built public museum in the world but cabinets are a part of an even bigger story the story of how we discovered the world and came to understand our place within it these eclectic collections would go in and out of fashion but they're appealed never went away and recently the cabinet's been having a renaissance as contemporary curators and artists embraced the exhilarating eccentricity that 17th century collectors cast off but the story starts as good stories often do with the opening of a box a cabinet of curiosities Britain has always been a nation of collectors we collect sort classify and build shrines to our obsessions from bottle tops to the Elgin marbles from the Tate Modern to Facebook but to really understand a love affair with objects we need to go back to the sixteenth century the first voyages of discovery and the explosion of global trade that followed was the Western world's big bang this was the moment when Britain's horizons expanded in a way that they hadn't imagined before the moment when for countless British travelers they encountered new places new people and new things for the first time for these early travelers in far-flung lands almost everything they saw was wondrous travel fueled our desire to possess the strange things that were emerging from foreign places and Renaissance collectors raided both time and space to get their hands on them copia or plenty was the buzzword of the day and everything was there for the taking one jacobian courtier made the mistake of mentioning to King James the first these strange new things virginia squirrels which they say can fly of course the monarch immediately demanded a few samples for himself a proud collector didn't tuck his treasures away in a dusty attic these strange items were intended for display to entertain and impress your friends you the earliest collectors will monarchs and aristocrats who sought out valuable things but by the time this collecting craze had reached British shores it had spread among the middling classes people like scholars and priests and they had rather less money to spend on their hobby so they're collecting focused mainly on natural objects and exotic things that were slightly less expensive things that they could acquire from merchants and travelers one of these middle-class collectors was John Barr grave a clergyman who would later become cannon of Canterbury Cathedral where his collection is still housed today Bar Grave fled England during the Civil War and spent the 1640s and 50s travelling through Europe and North Africa he documented his adventures in a beautifully illustrated travel diary the objects he collected still exist and are kept in his original cabinets how wonderful can we have a look inside yes and we can start with the straw here what is that this is a chameleon and that's the kind of mummified or is it of fossilized chameleons well it's pickled in effect and there's a very nice story attached to this item what's that well when bar grave went to North Africa in 1662 he was given this chameleon as a curiosity it was alive then so he brought it back on the ship with him Margrave and his traveling companions delighted in this little creature fed it flies and poked it to get it to change color but as they traveled further north the temperature dropped the supply flies decreased and the chameleon died onboard the shallow so bar grave gave it to the cook on the ship and he preserved it in brandy in brandy yes that's what bar grave says can we see some some more of those gracious oh what's that that's a hippopotamus tooth which was quite a curiosity in the 17th century and what that ah yes this is what's called the Frenchman's finger is it a real finger it is yes where did he get that from he got this from our monastery in Toulouse and the monastery had a catacomb of preserved bodies because the the bodies were mummified in the soil right so he not only viewed the bodies but he actually packed a piece of her body for himself she was offered the complete mummified body of a small child but he didn't have room for it in his bag so he settled for this instead so portability was key when you a souvenir collecting very much so in various case yes right sure some wall okay what's your favorite well my favorite might be the item in this drawer here just because it's so beautifully made very delicate lots of little spheres what is this it's the model of an I weigh model that was made of the human I made out of ivory and finally turned wood he got this in Venice that's rather wonderful isn't it so this is a product of new science of the period the newest discoveries and how the human body works and this travelling Englishman goes to Venice and picks up this working kind of model of the eye and brings it back yes to be able to show his friends yes absolutely and he doesn't tell us it that much about Venice about the sights of Venice and the beauties of Venice but he concentrates on the objects he acquired there bar graphs cabinets of curiosity were about spending time with objects taking pleasure in small things and enjoying the stories they told what I find interesting about these middle ranking collectors like bar grave is that they collected things not because they were costly or holy but just because they were curious bar graves cabinets were relatively modest but some collectors amassed so many carriers they occupied entire rooms these wander rooms as they were known were microcosms of the world the universe in miniature was considered particularly wondrous if it resisted classification for example a dodo was a thing of wonder because it was a flightless bird but wonders a tricky thing the cabinet was meant to be a mirror to the world an instrument of knowledge but wonder can very quickly turn into an obsession some of the things that were most prized by collectors were things that were monstrous in the Middle Ages freaks of nature were considered marks of ill omen but a renaissance scholar might look at the same thing and see a conundrum an enigma to be solved so dwarfs hirsute or two headed men were all in great demand by placing objects side-by-side collectors were trying to organize the world and understand it more deeply the way you displayed your collection depended on the story that you wanted to tell the kind of image of the world and of yourself that you wanted the collection to reflect I'm intrigued by the passion that drove those early cabinet enthusiasts so I've come to meet a modern day collector Victor wind has created his own one dirham in the East End of London how long have you been collecting I've been collecting since I was a child I just never stopped I've never grown out of it you mean that first pebble over the edge or the second order yes the shells from the beach or a pretty piece of wood so there is there is an immense temptation to get more things I'm a magpie it's a disease I can't help myself so will you show me some of the your favorite items it's very difficult to have favorites amongst children's I love everything everything equally and I'm not sure I like anything on his own and I like them together so here you have a non identified deep sea worm you have prison drawings by Charles Bronson every single english species of butterfly math results my misspent and childhood the preserved front bottoms of Victorian prostitutes tribal sculptures I brought back from the Congo dead babies a giant spider that I found in my tent the skull of an executed felon from the 19th century the Giants Japanese spider crab it's only actually a small one had a much bigger one that I had to sell it to pay for that I say would live upstairs what do you think the cabinet of curiosity this one in particular that says about you I mean is this a kind of reflection of your identity I think it's actually I feel it or maybe maybe that in in Reverse it's more it's it's part of me mmm section of my my brain or my a my understanding at the of the world the early collectors Victor admires didn't amass cabinets simply because they were drawn to things that were strange and wonderful a well-stocked collection was the key to improving your social standing and two men achieved this rather more successfully than most John Trudeau ii and his son john tree desk and jr who are off relatively humble stock but as had godness t charles the first they had the opportunity to travel widely in search of plants for the royal garden

Channel: Art Documentaries

Views: 265,545

Keywords: Cabinet Of Curiosities (Museum)

Id: _NDTSe4Y5JE

Length: 15min 3sec (903 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 03 2015