INTRODUCTION

A wunderkammer is a room of wondrous things both naturalU and artificial (i.e. manmade), a chamber of objects notewor­

thy for their beauty, or their rarity, or their artistic or scholarlyor monetary value. Europeans from various levels of society beganto form Wunderkammers in the 16th century. They were popularthroughout the 17th century, but they declined in the later 18th cen­tury' when a more systematic approach to the accumulation of natu­ral and man-made objects developed.The earliest illustration of a Wunderkammer appears as the double­

page woodcut frontispiece in Italian apothecary Ferrante Imperato'sDell'historia naturale libri xxviii, published in Naples in 1599 (see no. 3in the catalogue that follows). It shows Ferrante Imperato and his sonpresenting their collection to two visitors: Wunderkammers weregenerally meant to be seen and admired. The room is crammed withobjects housed in cases and hung from the walls and ceiling.

Wunderkammers typically employed every surface, horizontaland vertical, for display purposes. In Imperato's Wunderkammer, acrocodile hangs from the ceiling, a feature so widely imitated by sub­sequent collectors that later images of Wunderkammer collectionsare easily recognized by their floating crocodiles. The room is linedwith books and wall cabinets containing shells and coral, gems andminerals, and a jumble of other small objects, as well as a wide varietyof stuffed or dried animals, birds and fish, reptiles, plants, skulls, andthe like. Wunderkammers tended towards breadth rather than depth.

Wunderkammer creators can be roughly divided into two mainclasses: (1) the nobility, and (2) physicians, apothecaries, and profes­sional and amateur students of natural history. The first illustratedcatalogue of a French cabinet, Le jardin, et cabinet poetique, describesthe collections of Paul Contant and his father Jacques, apothecariesof Poitiers (no. 6). The first illustrated German Wunderkammer cata­logue, Fasciculus rariorum, was published in 1616 by Basil Besler ofHortus Eystettensis fame, a Nuremberg apothecary and botanist (no.8), and there are many other notable 17th-century examples of illus-

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trated Wunderkammer catalogues, a variety of which are present inthis exhibition.

Princely collectors include various Medicis and Hapsburgs andOldenburgs and the like: Augustus, Elector of Saxony (1526-1586);Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria (1529-1595); Francesco I de' Medici,Grand Duke of Tuscany (1541-1587); Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor(1552-1612); Frederick III, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein (1597-1659);Christian IV (1577-1648) and Christian V (1646-1699), Kings of Den­mark - the list is a long one. The French kings and the Tudor and Stuartrulers ofEngland showed less interest in such endeavors, though roomsof wonder formed by French medical and scholarly men abounded.

By the mid-17th century, there were a good many Wunderkam­mer catalogues available to serve as models for later collectors, andthe collections themselves tended to become known both locallyand internationally (see, for example, Leibnitz, no. 24); travelers ontour increasingly had published guides that they could consult aboutcabinets of wonder they wished to visit. A good selection of theseguides is on view in this exhibition (see nos. 30-35). At the Jesuits'college in Rome, Father Athanasius Kircher preSided over a particu­larly well-known cabinet (see nos. 20-22), frequently visited by tour­ists but also used for teaching purposes. Other collections had strongacademic connections: in Bologna, for example, Ulisse Aldrovandiassembled his great collections at least in part with students in mind,and the collections he bequeathed to his city were later augmented byother benefactors (see nos. 4-5 and Bolletti, no. 53).

Some owners employed their collections as devices to elevatetheir own social position; this was certainly the case with NicolasChevalier's Wunderkammer in Utrecht (no. 38), and likely with Jo­seph Furttenbach (see nos. 14-15). Others were reflections of theirowners' almost maniacal zeal for colleCting. After selling his col­lection en bloc in 1717, the Dutch botanist and anatomist FrederikRuysch went on to assemble an even larger Wunderkammer; themassive, heaVily-illustrated four-volume catalogue of his second col­lection (see no. 43) is generally considered to be the most beautiful ofall illustrated Wunderkammer books.

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Sometimes names better known in other fields crop up amongWunderkammer collectors - certainly the case with Peter the Great,who bought Frederik Ruysch's first collection and many others, aswell (see nos. 40-48). The substantial remains of his collecting zealmay still be seen in his capital city, St Petersburg. In the United States,the painter Charles Willson Peale established a Wunderkammer inPhiladelphia, featuring one of the world's first fully articulated pre­historic skeletons: the bones of a mastodon (he called it a mammoth).Peale's mastodon may still be seen in Darmstadt, Germany, but muchof his collection ended up in the hands of P. T. Barnum, who knewhow to exploit it (see nos. 118-124).

Many private collections were institutionalized in the 18th cen­tury, among them the Wunderkammer of Kilian Stobaeus, who gavehis collection to the University of Lund so that it could be used by hisstudents - one of whom was Carl Linnaeus (see nos. 58-60). By theend of the 18th century, princes and great men were as likely to es­tablish public as private collections, a notable instance being the Mu­seum Fridericium in Kassel (see du Ry and Cassel, nos. 61-62). Thistradition intensified in the 19th century, when many public museumswere founded. In this exhibition, I have used the Jardin des plantes

in Paris as a case study of an institution that began life firmly in theprivate sector but later evolved into a great national and publicly sup­ported resource (see nos. 64-68). Local examples of civic pride andbenevolence include the American Museum of Natural History andthe Metropolitan Museum of Art (see nos. 132-136).

Most Wunderkammer collectors were men, but there were ex­ceptions. Mary Cavendish Bentinck, Dowager Duchess of Portland(1715-1785), was one of the richest women in England. Horace Walpole(no mean collector himself) said of her that "few men have rivalledMargaret Cavendish in the mania of collecting, and perhaps no woman.In an age of great collectors she rivalled the greatest:' Her notablecollections at Bulstrode Hall, Buckinghamshire, were auctioned offa year after her death in 1786; the catalogue was compiled under thedirection of the late Duchess's librarian and chaplain, John Lightfoot(see no. 103). Mrs. Elizabeth Bligh, wife of Captain Bligh of H.M.S.

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Bounty fame, was a notable collector of shells sent from the seven seasby her husband and his friends. The collection went up for auctionsome years after her death. The catalogue is an important contribu­tion to the literature ofmalacology, naming several new species, someofwhich are depicted in its hand-colored plates (see no. 105).

A thread of commercialism permeates the history of cabinetsof curiosities. Some collectors bequeathed their Wunderkammersto their sons or other heirs (see Besler, nos. 8-9), or to municipal orstate organizations (see Legati, no. 18). But many collections were sold,either as a unit or piecemeal; collectors' heirs were not always thefriends of their relatives' collections (see Vincent, no. 96). One of theearliest Wunderkammer sale catalogues was issued by an enterprisingParisian art dealer, Edme-Franyois Gersaint (see no. 97). On a tripto the Low Countries in the 1730S, he noted that auctions of naturalhistory materials, and, in particular of shells, were doing quite well.Returning to Paris, he held his first natural history auction. Boucherdid the very lovely frontispiece to the catalogue, and Gersaint's shopwas later immortalized in a painting by Watteau (see page 95).

Wunderkammers that escaped institutionalization sometimesevolved into commercial enterprises, migrating to large cities in bothEurope and America. A good number of them were English - at leastin this instance, a nation ofshopkeepers indeed, part ofa long traditionranging from the Tradescants to John Mawe and William Bullock (seenos. 77-95). In the United States, almost all cabinets of curiosities wereassembled with paying customers in mind (see nos. 113-131). Though P.T. Barnum never did say that "there's a sucker born every minute;' heplayed a major role in the history of 19th-century American huckster­ism as a purveyor of cultural curiosities both high-class and low, rang­ing from Jenny Lind to cannibals from Fiji (see nos. 118, 122-123). In hishands and that of other American entrepreneurs such as Colonel JohnHarvey Wood, the Wunderkammer became a freak show. "Personswho are curiosities in themselves, or have charge of such, should applyat once;' Col. Wood advertised in the 1880s, "as I am placing fortunesin the hands of hundreds" (see no. 127); his Chicago museum featuredthe "largest lady in the world;' advertised to weigh nearly 900 pounds.

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A sorry end to a long tradition, perhaps: but we have many rea­sons to be grateful to Wunderkammer owners ranging from Imperatoin 1599 (see no. 3) to Paolo Vimercati Sozzi more than two and a halfcenturies later (see no. 69), as well as to many who came after them.Their collections have enriched art and sculpture galleries, museumsof natural history and science. Wunderkammers were the founda­tions of many of today's cultural institutions.

I HAVE BOUGHT Wunderkammer books from many dealers; I amespecially grateful to William Patrick Watson, Antiquariaat Junk, andBernard Quaritch Ltd for sending good books in my direction. I hopethat other dealers will note that I am still actively collecting in this area!

In 2011, I curated a Wunderkammer exhibition at the Hough­ton Library, Harvard University, entitled "Cabinets of Curiosity andRooms of Wonder;' based on the extensive holdings of various Har­vard libraries (including the Ernst Mayr Library of Comparative Zo­ology, the Botany libraries, the Countway Library of Medicine, andthe Houghton Library itself), with additions from my own collection.The show, which comprised about 40 items, was open from Octo­ber 2011 to mid-March 2012. I am grateful to William P. Stoneman,director of the Houghton Library, for suggesting that I do the show,and for his help (and that of his staff) in doing it. The present exhibi­tion at The Grolier Club, considerably larger than the Harvard show,runs from 5 December 2012 through 2 February 2013, and (in the fallof 2013) a third exhibition is planned for Grinnell College, where Iserved on the Board of Trustees between 2000 and 2008.

Many hands have been involved in producing the text of this cat­alogue. An enormous amount of material on the subject is availableon the internet; and in recent years, Wikipedia has become increas­ingly useful as a starting point for information on both collectors andcollections. In writing the entries in the present exhibition catalogue,we relied on a number of published SOUrces, in particular OliverImpey and Arthur MacGregor's The origin of museums: the cabinetof curiosities in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe (Oxford:

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Clarendon Press, 1985) and Arthur MacGregor's own Curiosity andEnlightenment: collectors and collections from the sixteenth to thenineteenth century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). All re­cent students of the Wunderkammer are indebted to Paul Grinke'sFrom Wunderkammer to museum (London: Quaritch, 2006), origi­nally published as a sale catalogue in 1984 as a joint venture by DianaParikian and Bernard Quaritch Ltd. The text of the present cataloguealso relies in part on descriptions written by antiquarian book deal­ers for books they sold to me (and also on dealers' descriptions ofbooks I already owned).

Maggie Long helped organize the photographs and the individu­al files backing up each entry. Lucy Anderson had a hand in many ofthe descriptions. Melissa Mead and Richard Noble copy edited andread proof until it came out of their ears. John V. Hunter translatedthe Russian in the Peter the Great entries. Jerry Kelly provided thecatalogue's elegant design. Robert Lorenzson took the photographs.George Ong, chair of The Grolier Club Publications Committee,helped see the catalogue through the press.

My sister Jessica Travis helped me layout both The Grolier Clubexhibition and its predecessor show at Harvard's Houghton Library;I am grateful to her for this, and much besides. At The Grolier Club,Megan Smith, coordinator of Grolier Club exhibitions, coped grace­fully with tight (and generally missed) deadlines. Executive DirectorEric Holzenberg was as helpful as always, as were both the currentpresident of The Grolier Club, Eugene Flamm, and his wife, SusanFlamm; this exhibition would not have happened without their wisecounsel. Fern Cohen, Elizabeth Fenwick, George Koppelman, Caro­line Schimmel, Mary Schlosser, Jean Stephenson, Lee Touchton, andMark Tomasko helped mount the show in the Club's exhibition hall,with the expert professional assistance of Henry Pelham Burn.

In September 2012, Terry Belanger, founding director of RareBook School, came in to help organize us all. With the assistance ofRyan Roth, he revised the database storing and organizing the biblio­graphical information underlying my Wunderkammer and other col­lections, persuaded my two computers to talk to each other, straight-

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ened out my paper files, wrote and edited catalogue entries, and gen­erally put the pieces together.

I wish to thank the institutional lenders to this exhibition: theAmerican Antiquarian Society, the Getty Research Institute, theHoughton Library of Harvard University, and the Sheridan LibrariesSpecial Collections of Johns Hopkins University. Ellen Dunlap madeborrowing the AAS's copy of "Sleighing in New York" (see no. u8)

a pleasure. At the Getty, David Brafman helped me understand andappreciate the Institute's Wunderkammer books, Marcia Reed helpedme with the descriptions of the material we borrowed (see nos. 2 and39). At Harvard, Carie McGinnis and William P. Stoneman were in­strumental in easing the complicated process of borrowing old, frag­ile, and valuable materials (see nos. 3, 7, 18, 46, and 51). I particularlywish to thank the Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University forlending two volumes of their spectacular hand-colored copy of Seba(no. 45) to the exhibition; and I am grateful to curator Earle Havens,conservator Sonja Jordan-Mowery, and director Winston Tabb for fa­cilitating the loan of this and other items (see nos. 1, 88, and 94).

My fellow Grolier Club member Mark Tomasko very kindly lentme several American items on very short notice (see nos. 121, 132, and134-135). Finally, I wish to thank my long-time friends for listeningpatiently over the years as I warbled on - and on - about the joys ofWunderkammer collecting.

THE PRESENT CATALOGUE is a preliminary to a much larger pub­lication containing information about my entire collection of Wun­derkammer books (including a considerable number that were not eli­gible for this exhibition because they have no illustrations). The largerpublication will itself be extensively illustrated, and it will contain in­formation (notably format and collation statements, indication of dedi­catees, and provenance) that could not feaSibly be included here. I hopeto be able to send the larger publication to press before the end of 2013.

In the title-page transcriptions of the entries that follow in thiscatalogue, I have usually shortened very long titles and reduced

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capitalization to the level of prose, following national conventionsof orthography. I have not generally added accents where they donot appear in the original titles. Latin titles are a problem; ancientwriters did not make a distinction between capital and lower-case let­ters, and I have found little agreement today as to the best method ofdealing with the title-page transcriptions ofbooks in Latin publishedduring the hand-press period. I have tried to be consistent, but manyhands have worked on the descriptions of my books over the pastseveral decades, and I cannot flatter myself that I have entirely suc­ceeded in this effort.

In his preface to the 1825 Tankerville sale (see no. 106), GeorgeSowerby concludes with words that will ring true to every curator:

"This Catalogue has been written under such numerous disadvantag­es, that we have reason to fear some important errors may have creptin, for which we trust every allowance will be made by the candidscientific reader:'

The present catalogue was prepared in some haste, and I will bevery grateful for corrections and other amendments regarding its text,so that I can incorporate them into the larger book.

FLORENCE FEARRINGTON

New York City14 December 2012

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