Wealthy aristocrats--many starting in the 16th century, would compile articles of interest from the natural and scientific and medical world--and display them in dedicated rooms of their homes. Cabinets started out as a room, but it morphed in later years as a actual piece of furniture or cabinet or two in a home library or study. There were no public museums--so the cabinets of curiosities actually sometimes became the starts to later developed museum collections.
We have seen some of these rooms and cabinets in some private homes in the Czech Republic--cabinets of the most unusual things--and collections--pressed flowers, nuts, fossils, bones, eggs, medical instruments, samples of bark, bits of taxidermy--you name it. All the pieces are catalogued--and available for owner and guest to pour over them and learn about the natural world.
Dear One and I have started our own collection--fossils. Mostly purchased decades ago--all legally purchased I might add--of aquatic life that once occupied what we now know as South Dakota.
Oh, how fabulous! Darn, I worked an art and antique show for a fabulous collector of fossils, among other things, who passed away at Sedge Meadow Antiques in Hebron, IL (6 miles from here) two Fridays ago and the cabinets were filled with fossils. (Whatever is left has been greatly marked down) There were bowls filled with small ones, etc. I could have meet you then!
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Oh wow--I hope the sale got good money for the fossils. Some can be serious cha ching. You certainly find some interesting things Ginene!!
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