Cabinets of curiosities, also known as ‘wonder-rooms’, were esoteric collections of objects whose precise rules were undefined. With the growth of world trade and growing interest in early modern science, all sorts of objects were brought back to Europe (and later the USA) to be shown off by the wealthy with a taste for the bizarre, occult-tinged, and vaguely salacious, all under the guise of expanding common knowledge.
John Dee - man of many curiosities
English scholar, mathematician, magician, astronomer, and Queen Elizabeth I’s astrologer, John Dee (1527–1608), was known for his interest in the occult and possession of various cabinets of curiosities. The British Museum displays objects once owned by Dee, including Dee's Speculum - an obsidian Aztec-made demon-summoning device in the shape of a hand mirror, a crystal ball, and various amulets.
An entire article could be devoted to the enlightening life story of John Dee and his scientific interest in alchemy, alongside other eminent scientists of the time, but the following points of interest will have to suffice for now:
“According to MacTutor History of Mathematics biographers J J O'Connor and E F Robertson (2002), before becoming the Queen’s astrologer and, according to some historians, her ‘spy’, on 28 May 1555, Dee was arrested and charged with "calculating". At this time, mathematics in England was considered to be equivalent to the possession of magical powers. Although he was guilty of the charges brought against him, Dee was released in August.
On 15 January 1556, he presented plans for a national library to Queen Mary but failed to receive official backing. Possibly because Mary instigated a campaign against eminent Protestants which included his father Roland Dee who was arrested and taken prisoner in August 1553. He was released after being deprived of all his financial assets.
Queen Mary died in 1558 and the Protestant Elizabeth became Queen. Dee quickly found favor with and was even asked to use his astrological skills to select the most appropriate day for her coronation.
In 1568 he published Propaedeumata Aphoristica and presented the work to Queen Elizabeth. Elizabeth was impressed and Dee gave her mathematics lessons to enable her to understand it. The book contains a mixture of good physics and mathematics, and also a lot of astrology and magic. Let us emphasise that we should not think any the less of Dee because of his interests in magic; most of the great scientists and mathematicians of his time, and much later, had such interests. For example Brahe firmly believed in alchemy and astrology as did Cavalieri and Kepler while Newton, like Dee, was obsessed with studying alchemy.
Despite becoming close to Queen Elizabeth, and frequently advising her, he never achieved from her the financial security that he longed for to enable him to devote himself completely to his studies and quest to to understand the ultimate truths about the universe.
According to Gwyn A.Williams, author of When was Wales?: A History of the Welsh (1985), as a political advisor, Dee advocated the foundation of English colonies in the New World to form a "British Empire”, a term he is credited with coining.
We note that in his diaries, Dee refers to himself as Δ, a clever pun on the fact that Δ is the Greek character for the letter "dee" and also a magical symbol.”
Allin's Cabinet of Curiosities
The heyday of the Cabinet was from around the late 15th century to around the 1750s, when Enlightenment thinking began to regard the collections as vulgar and rather déclassé, a bit ‘naff’ in other words.
Case in point, in England, Birmingham’s 'Allin's Cabinet of Curiosities'.
‘In Allin’s cabinet there were taxidermied animals; ‘birds of all kinds and beasts of rare creation’ and in the image above there are two birds on the window ledge of the first floor window. Also on display were ‘shells, medals [and] foreign coins from every nation’, and Allin had his own coin struck advertising his shop and his miniature panorama. The scenes in his panorama changed on alternate days, unlike the full scale panorama nearby on New Street, which changed, usually, monthly. He also boasts of a 'crooked telescope that views straight', a mirror that distorts the image and a model of the solar system.’
There were of course later exceptions, such as New York’s Hobby Club (1908-17), a businessmen’s dining club which showcased ‘cabinets of wonder’ and selected collections of their unique interests.
The club constitution read, "This Club shall be called THE HOBBY CLUB. The object of the Club shall be to encourage the collection of literary, artistic and scientific works; to aid in the development of literary, artistic and scientific matters; to promote social and literary intercourse among its members, and the discussion and consideration of various literary and economic subjects."
Reminiscent in some ways of the ‘Club of the Damned’, the setting for the BBC1 TV series Supernatural (1977), where prospective members were required to tell a horror story, their application judged on how frightening the story was. Those who failed to tell a sufficiently chilling tale were killed.
One of the club’s entrance stories, presented for you, dear reader:
In 2022, Netflix premiered Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities; rather a good show, but little really to do with actual Cabinets.
Today, the Cabinet of Curiosities is making a something comeback, alongside the renewed interest in already extant collections.
The US
Alex Jordan’s House on the Rock in Spring Green, Wisconsin , boasts a collection of various functioning automata.
Rhode Island’s Musée Patamécanique contains works representing the field of ‘Patamechanics.’ Patamechanics is an artistic practice and area of study inspired by 'pataphysics’, a concept invented by French writer Alfred Jarry (1873-1907) who asserts that the systems of order we live by are ultimately human creations.
Houston’s Museum of Natural Science houses its own Cabinet of Curiosities, and in Los Angeles, the Museum of Jurassic Technology ventures to replicate the thrill that the old cabinets of curiosity once invoked.
In July 2021, the UK saw a ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’ room opened at The Whitaker Museum & Art Gallery in Rawtenstall, Lancashire.
In Yorkshire’s very pretty village of Haworth (home of the Brontës) stands The Cabinet of Curiosities, a shop, not a museum, but nicely rendered, nevertheless.
In my own abode, I have an extensive collection of what I have termed ‘Knick-Knackery’ which includes some authentic and inauthentic objects of interest from around the globe, displayed for the visitor’s amusement and awe. Gewgaws, sculptures, Roman and Greek spoila, coins, engravings, machines, medals, toys, and the like.
Where to find curious collections in London
Confining myself to London, here are some (usually free) establishments where Paranormal Daily News readers can gaze and wonder at all sort of bizarre esoterica:
Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Rd., London NW1 2BE
The Science Museum, Exhibition Rd, South Kensington, London SW7 2DD
The Horniman Museum, 100 London Rd, London SE23 3PQ
The Hunterian Museum, The Royal College of Surgeons of England 38, 43 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PE
ESPECIALLY: The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History, 11 Mare St, London E8 4RP
The collection includes curiosities such as hairballs, two-headed lambs and Fiji mermaids, dodo bones and extinct bird feathers, as well as the skeleton of a giant anteater. It also includes Sebastian Horsley's nails from his crucifixion (I knew Sebastian as a fellow member of Soho’s notorious Colony Room Club), human remains including shrunken heads, tribal skulls, dead babies in bottles and pickled genitalia of sex workers, tribal art from New Guinea, plus scientific and medical instruments. It also houses celebrity excrement, erotica and contraceptive sheaths used by the Rolling Stones.
Grant Museum, Rockefeller Building, 21 University St, London WC1E 6DE
The John Soane Museum, 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3BP
British Museum, Great Russell St, London WC1B 3DG
https://www.britishmuseum.org/
The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Rd, South Kensington, London SW7 5BD
The Victoria and Albert Museum, Cromwell Rd, London SW7 2RL
And just down the road from me in the Bedfordshire market town of Leighton Buzzard, the ‘Ravens Folly’ museum of oddities:
Stephen Arnell’s book THE GREAT ONE is available now on Amazon Kindle:
The Old Curiosity Shop (1995)
References
John Dee Biography https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Dee/
