Hmm, that’s odd
A bit more rooting around in other people’s boxes of stuff lately. Nothing to get alarmed about though. Specifically it’s the curiosity cabinets alluded to in previous posts on Mark Ryden and assemblages.
Due to my adolescent predilection for collection, I can’t get enough of the boxed sets carefully laid out by 16th- and 17th-century Europeans, as wonderfully detailed by McGill University history buff GillesThibault on his lovely website (high-school French or better required).
Folks back in the just plain curious days before television gathered together all the oddities they could from the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms and arranged them in fine wooden cabinets to show their friends. They were evidence of serious scholarship for some, conversation pieces for most, but they were usually always interesting to look it, certainly a lot more so than the sticks of furniture surrounding them. See the rest.
