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 toadfish, a number of things changed to stone

and a robe that once belonged to the father of Pocahontas.

This was John Tradescant's 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 the craze

for collecting that gripped 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 the Ashmolean Museum

and I found myself staring mesmerised

at the very same array of curios that the German tourist

had written about so many years ago.

John Tradescant's cabinet of curiosities

would eventually become The Ashmolean -

the first purpose-built public museum in the world.

But cabinets are 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 their appeal 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 our love-affair with objects,

you need to go back to the 16th 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 Britain's horizons expanded in a way

they hadn't imagined before.

The moment when for countless British travellers they

encountered new places, new people and new things for the first time.

For these early travellers in far flung lands,

almost everything they saw was wondrous.

Travel fuelled 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 Jacobean courtier made the mistake of mentioning

to King James I 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.

The earliest collectors were 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 their collecting focused mainly on natural objects

and exotic things that were slightly less expensive.

Things they could acquire from merchants and travellers.

One of these middle-class collectors was John Bargrave,

a clergyman who would later become canon of Canterbury Cathedral,

where his collection is still housed today.

Bargrave fled England during the Civil War

and spent the 1640s and '50s travelling 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.

We can start with this drawer here.

-What is that?

-This is a chameleon.

-And that's kind of mummified?

Or is it a...fossilised chameleon?

Well, it's pickled, in effect.

-There's a very nice story attached to this item.

-What's that?

Well, when Bargrave 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.

Bargrave and his travelling companions delighted in this

little creature - fed it flies and poked it to get it to change colour.

But as they travelled further north the temperature dropped,

the supply of flies decreased and the chameleon died on board the ship.

-Oh, no!

-So Bargrave gave it to the cook on the ship

-and he preserved it in brandy.

-In brandy?

Yes. That's what Bargrave says.

-Can we see some more of these treasures?

-Of course.

-Oh. What's that?

-That's a hippopotamus tooth,

-which was quite a curiosity in the 17th century.

-But what's that?

Ah, yes. This is what's called the Frenchman's finger.

-Is it a real finger?

-It is.

Where did he get that from?

He got this from a monastery in Toulouse

and the monastery had a catacomb of preserved bodies

-because the bodies were mummified in the soil.

-Right.

So he not only viewed the bodies

but he actually packed a piece of a body for himself.

He was offered the complete mummified body of a small child

but he didn't have room for it in his bag so settled for this instead.

So portability was key when you're souvenir collecting.

-Very much so in Bargrave's case. Yes.

-Right. Show us some more.

-OK.

What's your favourite?

Well, my favourite might be the item in this draw here,

just because it's so beautifully made.

They're very delicate. Lots of little spheres.

-What is this?

-It's the model of an eye.

A model that was made of the human eye.

Made out of ivory and finely turned wood. He got this in Venice.

That's rather wonderful, isn't it?

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

model of the eye and brings it back to be able to show his friends.

Yes, absolutely. And he doesn't tell us that much about Venice,

about the sights of Venice and the beauties of Venice,

but he concentrates on the objects he acquired there.

Bargrave's 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 Bargrave is that they collected things

not because they were costly or holy but just because they were curious.

Bargrave's cabinets were relatively modest

but some collectors amassed so many curios they occupied entire rooms.

These "wonder rooms", as they were known,

were microcosms of the world - the universe in miniature.

A thing was considered particularly wondrous

if it resisted classification.

For example, a dodo was a thing of wonder

because it was a flightless bird.

But wonder is 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 dwarves, hirsute or two-headed men were all in great demand.

By placing objects side by side,

collectors were trying to organise 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.

Viktor Wynd has created his own wonder room

in the East End of London.

How long have you been collecting?

I've been collecting since I was a child. I've just never stopped.

I've never grown out of it.

You mean that first pebble of a weird shape?

First pebble, yes,

the shells from the beach or the pretty piece of wood.

-So 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 your favourite items?

It's very difficult to have favourites amongst children.

I love everything equally.

I'm not sure I like anything on its own. 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 -

the results of my misspent 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 giant Japanese spider crab,

though it's only actually a small one.

I had a much bigger one but I had to sell it

to pay for the disabled loo upstairs.

What do you think the cabinet of curiosity

- this one in particular - kind of says about you?

Is this a kind of reflection of your identity?

I think...I feel it's maybe that in reverse.

It's part of me.

It's a sort of section of my brain or my understanding of the world.

The early collectors Viktor 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 Tradescant and his son, John Tradescant Junior,

were of relatively humble stock.

But as head gardeners to Charles I

they had the opportunity to travel widely

in search of plants for the royal garden.

The cabinet of curiosities that John Tradescant built up in his house

in Lambeth became a must-see destination for visitors to London.

Tradescant himself was seen as a contemporary Noah

and his collection was affectionately nicknamed The Arc.

With their cabinet of curiosities,

the Tradescants built up a snapshot of their world.

Through their collection we can read their interests,

anxieties and peculiar fascinations

and share the sheer exhilaration of being alive in a world

that had suddenly grown bigger

through global trade and exploration.

This is a really good example of that great

excitement of global travel.

John Tradescant Junior said that this was

the mantle of the King of Virginia.

He meant, of course, Powhatan,

the leader or chief of the Algonquian tribe.

But we probably know Powhatan better as the father of Pocahontas.

We don't know where the Tradescants got this mantle.

We don't know whether this is a mantle at all.

It's probably more likely to be a ceremonial wall hanging.

And, in fact, we don't quite know

whether this has anything to do with Powhatan.

But this we know - that when Pocahontas was brought over

to England and wined and dined by royalty,

people would have been desperate to get a glimpse

of the world that she had come from.

So people would have thronged to the Tradescant

cabinet of curiosity to see this mantle,

have a little bit of the New World literally within their reach.

In fact, if you look carefully, you can see little bits

of the mantle where people have plucked out cowrie shells.

Of course, this is long before our time where museum objects

have been vacuum-sealed away from visitors' hands.

The story of how John Tradescant's curiosities

found their way into one of the most renowned museums in the world

is a dark tale of duplicity and one-upmanship.

When John Tradescant Junior decided to print a catalogue

to publicise their collection, he made one big mistake.

He enlisted the help of his neighbour, Elias Ashmole,

a shrewd lawyer who was an even more determined

social climber than he was.

Ashmole understood the kudos that went with a well-known

and really extensive collection.

He had amassed quite an impressive cabinet of curiosities himself.

But he had his eyes on the much better-known

and much more extensive collection of his neighbours, the Tradescants.

Ashmole paid for the publication of John Tradescant's catalogue.

So although it was published under the Tradescant name,

Ashmole was already beginning

to associate himself with the collection.

When Tradescant Junior died, he left his collection to his wife

with instructions that on her death it should be given to Oxford

or Cambridge University.

Ashmole seized his chance.

He approached Oxford University about gifting them

the Tradescant collection with two provisos.

Firstly, that it should be housed in a purpose-built new museum

and secondly, that it should be open to the public.

But in doing so, Elias Ashmole was styling himself

ever so subtly as both the owner and the donor of this collection.

When Tradescant's widow died two years later Ashmole moved quickly,

taking out a lease on Tradescant's home

and taking possession of the collection it contained.

It took Oxford University six years to complete the impressive new home

for the Tradescant's treasures.

But on 21st May 1683, the building finally opened its doors

and became the first purpose-built public museum in the world.

The new building was named not after the Tradescants,

whose collection of curiosities it housed,

but the Ashmolean Museum after Elias Ashmole.

His grand plan was complete.

Ashmole died without an heir, but his name is very much with us.

As his epitaph states,

"As long as the Ashmolean Museum endures, he will never die."

All of Tradescant's wonders were now accessible

to everyone who could play the sixpence entry fee.

One early visitor enthused,

"The Ashmolean is absolutely the best collection

"of such rarities that I have ever beheld."

But not everyone took kindly to a load of ordinary people

wandering around in search of easy entertainment.

One aristocrat, visiting on market day,

complained the museum was, "full of all sorts of country folk."

Worse still, even women were allowed in.

"They run here and there grabbing at everything," he grumbled.

But the museum's opening coincided with a cooling off

of our love affair with the Cabinet of Curiosities.

The Cabinet with its marvellous monstrosities was at odds

with the new 17th-century spirit of enlightenment.

This was a period obsessed with systematic order and classification.

The once loved Cabinet became seen as a chaotic freak show

and many private collections were donated to modern museums.

In these new, well-ordered exhibition spaces,

the antique was set apart from the contemporary,

the natural wonders from the artificial.

And the dizzying variety of the Cabinet

was rationally re-arranged, like with like.

But there's something about the Cabinet

that we could never quite leave behind.

I think it's the tantalising contradiction

that lies at its heart.

On the one hand, there's that urge

to categorise and understand the world,

but on the other, there's that equally strong urge

to experience wonder, for the world to defy our understanding.

While modern museums cater for that appetite for education and knowledge,

contemporary curators and artists

are responding to our yearning for wonder,

borrowing from the Cabinet's startling juxtaposition of objects

to force us to look at the world with fresh eyes.

From the shocking physicality

of Damien Hirst's animals in formaldehyde displayed in tanks...

..to Polly Morgan's reinvention of taxidermy,

creating unsettling pieces that are both familiar and strange.

And Grayson Perry's clever curation at the British Museum,

mixing age-old artefacts with new pieces of his own.

But perhaps the most deliberate appropriators of the Cabinet

are London artists, The Connor Brothers.

Their Cabinet-themed show

contained new works that are a puzzling blend of fact and fiction.

Fellow Cabinet lover, Philip Hoare,

joined me to explore their disconcerting Wonder Room.

Wolphin. SHE LAUGHS

A whale/dolphin. I couldn't quite work out what that is, actually.

False killer whale. Is that false killer whale mashed up with a bottle-nosed dolphin?

-It's got that weird...

-Yeah.

Actually, it's been turned on its head there. Look.

-There's teeth marks, look.

-Oh, right!

Pockets, look. So it's been... SHE LAUGHS

They've mashed something on to the top of it.

-Gosh!

-Oh, goodness! Look at that!

What's that?! SHE LAUGHS

-Gold...?!

-Gold plated?!

-Gold plated?!

Pablo Escobar's Gold Plated Hippopotamus Skull.

Can you believe that?! SHE LAUGHS

-I'd love to believe it. It's a good story, isn't it?

-I guess so.

If you're going to have a gold-plated hippopotamus skull,

-it should belong to a Colombian cocaine baron, I think.

-Absolutely.

And I love the notion that they imported hippos to Columbia.

But that's the good thing about these collections of curiosities isn't it,

-each object has to have a story.

-Yeah.

And I don't know if we sometimes wonder,

or does it even matter whether it's true or not?

I don't think it does, does it?

I mean, it's what's been invested in that object, isn't it?

-It's what it's been charged with, it's kind of a narrative.

-Hmm.

So why do you think contemporary artists

are so fascinated with the idea of cabinets of curiosity?

There's so much in the last decade or so that plays with that concept.

I think it's looking back to a period

before art became digital and conceptual, back to the real object.

I mean, I think in a way it started with Damien Hirst with those tanks.

You know, there couldn't be anything more...more of an extraordinary take

on the cabinet of curiosities as The Physical Impossibility Of Death In The Mind Of Someone Living.

-Yeah.

-Hirst's shark. Suddenly you're face to face, mouth to mouth

with this leviathan, this beast.

We weren't used to seeing things like that in a museum, in the gallery situation.

And, of course, addressing notions of mortality as well.

One of the things that always fascinates me about cabinets of curiosity

is that they have a real obsession with death.

Absolutely. And it's the memento mori, isn't it?

It's the notion of what something is speaking of your own mortality,

it's challenging your mortality,

-it's showing you, you know, this is a mirror held up to you.

-Yes.

But, I suppose, it's also strangely comforting then

if you have a cabinet where you're collecting these things,

little fragments of existence

that you're shoring up against the passage of time.

I think that's a really good point.

It's almost as though you close the doors on your own mortality,

carefully controlled and shut away, you know, with these strange things.

Back in the 16th century,

cabinets of curiosity allowed bold adventurers

to make sense of the wonders they were discovering.

Today, modern technology has turned us all into collectors.

With mobile phones, we snap up the places we've been,

the weird and wonderful things we've seen,

even the food we eat.

Through Instagram and Pinterest,

we curate our own lives.

And, just like those early collectors,

we present the things that make us appear

as interesting and well-travelled as possible.

Every cabinet of curiosity was a miniature universe

and each collector curated his own individual version.

So every cabinet told a story not just about the world,

but about the collector himself.

So in some ways these dusty, eccentric, antique collections

tell us a story that is startlingly modern,

that there is no singular truth about the world,

just many different stories seen through many different eyes.