Showing off the exotic, the bizarre and the marvelous in your sitting room: marine life in cabinets of curiosities and their precursors

By Dimitra Mylona.

Roxani and I have often reflected on the nature of our fascination with marine creatures and the people of the sea.  Our wonder permeates our posts taking the form of strange stories, bizarre images, wondrous narratives and what, we think, are fascinating topics!  We do not always travel far, in a physical sense, to find those materials but we do that mentally, through books, archaeological and historical reports and by digging deep into online museum and library resources and all sorts of collections. 

At some point we realized that what we do shares some elements with a very old tradition: as we strive to collect, understand, and exhibit in the best light the wonders of the physical and cultural world of the sea, we create our own virtual cabinet of marine curiosities!

The Age of Exploration and the wonders of the world

From the late 15^th century onwards, Europeans set sail around the globe initiating what is known as the Age of Exploration. Discovery of  “new” lands and people, securing of new trade routes, the importation of a dazzling array of new products, such as the cocoa and tobacco from the Americas are some of the highlights of this era.  Those products were added to old ones that were already imported to Europe in previous centuries from Africa and Asia, such as spices and silk, creating enthusiasm and opportunities for new sensual experiences and wealth.  All the above and the almost mythical adventures of dubious historical figures such as Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Ferdinand Magellan and others are just the glossy cover of a cruel story of colonialism.  Oppression, genocide, pillage and devastation were only some of the long lasting dark effects of this era that still haunt us today. 

From those days that shifted global history, in this post, we would like to zoom in on something small, something that at first glance may seem inconsequential, something like a glimmer in the shadow of the big events: the marine creatures that ended up in western European living rooms, and more specifically in dedicated spaces called cabinets of curiosities, in the 16^th and 17^th centuries.  European mariners, sailors, traders and the occasional dignitary who travelled to the “newly occupied exotic lands”, brought back to European ports mementos of their travels, or things that caught their attention: glossy and oversized shells, the toes of wild animals, feathers of birds of paradise, ferocious looking teeth of bizarre fish, and other curiosities.  These items gave to the intensely parochial European public a taste of the diversity of god’s creations and astonishment about the marvels that lay out there in some distant places.

Soon, those objects acquired monetary value, and a special type of trade developed. Collectors sought after those imports with enthusiasm and dedication. What was important was rarity.  A story we read in Cynthia Barnett’s book The Sound of the Sea. Seashells and the fate of the oceans illustrates this phenomenon quite nicely.  Seventeenth century Amsterdam was a truly international port. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) monopolized trade in Asia and Dutch merchant ships returned from the East and the West Indies loaded with spices, silks and other spoils.  Among those, peculiar naturalia arrived at the docks of Amsterdam: dried crocodiles and rounded puffer fish, skins of huge snakes, and an abundance of colorful and strange seashells that generated immense interest among collectors.  Dutch art of the time showcases this most eloquently.

In 1663 a small, ivory white shell of a gastropod showed up in Amsterdam.  Its name was Precious Wentletrap, which means spiral staircase, after its shape and the pronounced ridges that mark the shells spirals.  The scientific name for this species is now Epitonium scalare.  Back in the day the shell was considered ultra rare and that drove its price to the sky.  Only a few specimens were known and two of them were owned by Russia’s Empress Catherine the Great and Sweden’s Queen Louisa Ulrika (the patron of Swedish naturalist Carl Linneus, who devised the modern two-name classification system).  The high prices for this shell lasted for about a century.  In 1750 the German Emperor Franz I was rumored to have paid 4000 guilders for one such shell (about 140.000 dollars today) but in Amsterdam in 1792 a Perfect Wentletrap was sold for 50 guilders (1750 dollars) and in London in 1822 it was sold for 8 pounds (about 460 dollars today) (for the conversion of historical currency use this).  Today it costs about 5 dollars on the web market.  Epitonium scalare is a marine gastropod found in the Red Sea, in the Indian Ocean in Madagascar and South Africa, in the South West Pacific, and in Fiji and Japan.  It is a parasitic species that stays buried in the sand and only surfaces every few weeks to feed.  Once its biology and ethology were understood, its rarity vanished and so did its value.

The collection of plants and animals from Europe’s new territories in distant places was a very dynamic, evolving phenomenon. It was not only closely linked to economic interests and the struggle for supremacy among the powers of the time, but was also strongly influenced by the values of Enlightenment. The cabinets of curiosities changed character over time and gave rise to new institutions such as scientific societies, specialized natural history publications, and museums open to the public.  This complex and infinitely rich situation is not for this post to tackle.   It is interesting, however, to consider this:  shells, dried fish, corals, colorful feathers, dried plants, and bizarre seeds acquired value and a new life when they reached European hands.  Their origin, the physical world from which they were torn away, was, at first, missing.  And the people who actually produced them, who fished the shells and caught the birds, the people whose world they belonged to, were quite invisible.  This is not unlike the case of the precious pearls and their impoverished fishermen that was discussed by Roxani in a previous post.

There were only few early exceptions to this.  One is a major work by Georg Eberhard Rumphius D’Amboinsche Rariteitkamer (published in English as The Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet), which he compiled while working for the Dutch East India Company in what is now Indonesia (at Ambon, one of the Spice Islands).  Rumphius is also known as “Pliny of the Indies” (Plinius Indicus) because of his natural history work in Southeast Asia. In the Ambonese Cabinet of Curiosities he dedicated a whole volume to marine shells and crabs.  He discussed the practicalities of collecting and preparing the specimens, and he also provided information for the medicinal or other special uses of the shells, which he learned from the locals.  This is one of the rare cases where the collectible specimens are viewed in the context of their place and culture of origin. On the elaborate frontispiece of Ruphius’s  Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet that we show here the reader can discern this interest in local societies as well as the sharp distinction between those and the Europeans.

The sea in the Cabinets of Curiosities: the explorers, the royal persons, the erudite scholars and us

We hinted at it already. Soon after the Age of Exploration begun, cabinets of curiosities became the new rave!  One can find names for it in several European languages: cabinets of wonders, cabinets de curiosités, Kunstkammern, Kunstkabinette, Wunderkammern etc.  A cabinet of curiosities was a collection of notable objects.  It could be a whole room that housed this collection, or a piece of furniture that was filled with them.  In today’s terms we could describe the contents of such a cabinet as pertaining to natural history, geology, ethnography, archaeology, religion, and art. Specimens of both nature and culture found their place in them and sometimes the line between the two was really hard to discern, as some of the natural objects were faked or worked.  In the 17^th century, for example, the European shell markets were flooded with perfect imitations of the Precious Wentletrap, which we discussed above, made out of rice paper in China! Nowadays, those imitation shells are far more expensive than the originals.

These collections of notable objects did not follow any strict rules at first. They just reflected the interests of the collectors, which were often broad and varied. They also were tools that helped their owners to establish and uphold rank in society.  Cabinets of curiosities were not mere playthings to pass the time.  They were not of one type only either.  Rulers had their splendid cabinets, filled to the brim with pieces of art, curiosities and rarities that reflected the power and prowess of the state and its representatives. Traders had their own cabinets of curiosities.  They were directly involved in the circulation of those bizarre, exotic object, so they had easy access to them. Also, they had the money to purchase them and the desire to show off the power that money provided.  Finally, the early practitioners of science also built cabinets of curiosities.  For them those were tools of learning, or better of Renaissance living.  They even built inventories of their collections, which they printed and shared with others. Much smaller cabinets were also formed by individuals of modest financial means. Those tended to focus on objects of the natural world. 

Whatever the scale of collecting and exhibiting, it is clear that the discovery of “new” continents and vast oceans revolutionized the way Europeans viewed the world and their own place within it. This vast “new world”, through the sampling of its most marvelous material elements, was brought into people’s homes!

Eventually, the richest of those cabinets of curiosities ended up forming the heart of some of the most iconic museums of today. The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, for example, was built when in 1683 English antiquarian Elias Ashmole donated the contents of his cabinet (more like large room) of curiosities to Oxford University, believing in the Enlightenment idea that “the knowledge of nature is very necessary to human life and health”.  This trend continued into the 18^th century with the establishment of museums of global significance such as the British Museum in London, the Prado in Madrid, and the Louvre in Paris.

A cabinet of curiosities had some limitations, at least as far as its natural specimens are concerned.  Not everything could be brought back or kept for long.  Many animals in particular could not be transported alive for the long months (or years) that a return trip frοm the other side of the world would take.  Taxidermy was hardly an option, especially in the early years, and preservation by other means (drying, pickling etc) was not suitable for all species.  That is probably why seashells and corals feature large in cabinets of curiosities, as are some fish and other marine creatures that could easily and reliably be dried.  Sawfish rostra, narval tusks, sea turtle carapaces, dried giant squid, an endless array of seashells, and colorful corals were common collectibles. The dazzling biodiversity of the tropical seas was eagerly showcased.

The origins of cabinets of curiosities lie in the past

A web search on the phenomenon of cabinets of curiosities and their amazing contents almost invariably leads the reader to the Era of Enlightenment and the 16^th century onwards. If, however, we dig a little deeper (pun intended), then we realize that the phenomenon was not new.  The fascination with the bizarre, the exotic, the absurd or the purely amazing is apparently diachronic.  If we go back in time we find similar collections in the Roman period, which contained specimens brought in (often looted) from all over the empire.  In antiquity all sorts of stories circulated about mythical or semi-mythical creatures that lived in distant lands. Those often had some active role in myths or in historical events that were thought to have taken place in the distant past. Those creatures, or parts of them, sometimes ended as offerings in temples.  Adrienne Mayor, in her book The First Fossil Hunters, notes that the sacred inventories of temples give us an idea of what those might be: foreign armor, antique weapons, pickled mermen (see our story on mermaids, mermen and other strange creatures….), Leda’s eggs, great ivory tusks, the golden fleece, strands of Medusa’s hair, gigantic snake skins, bones and teeth of heroes, giants and monsters.  Unlike the objects of the more recent cabinets of curiosities, those temple collections were not divested from their historic context, on the contrary, their value lay in the narrative that accompanied them.

David Reese, a specialist in archaeological seashells, has collected extensive evidence for shells of Indo-Pacific origin in the Mediterranean in antiquity.  The list is long and very interesting.  One shell offers a good case study.  It is the massive, extraordinary Tridacna squamosa, commonly known as fluted giant clam.  This is a large clam species native to shallow coral reefs of the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean.  It does not live in the Mediterranean.  Yet, fragment of those shells or even complete valves, in their natural state or engraved, are found in temples, graves and other contexts of the historical period: the Heraion on Samos island, the Sanctuary of Aphaia on Aegina island, at Delphi, Olympia, Perachora, Athens, and elsewhere.

When the Romans conquered the Greek East, they were inevitably attracted by those collections and some of them were brought back to Rome, to be exhibited and marveled at.  Romans had an enthusiasm for curiosities.  Pliny the Elder tells us a story about one of the most prominent Roman collectors (Natural History, 9.10-11).  Marcus Aemilius Scaurus was a Roman politician (praetor in 56 BCE) and in the course of his career found himself in the East, acting as governor of Syria.  After a victory at Joppa in Judaea (modern day Jaffa-Tel Aviv in Israel) he brought back to Rome, in 58 BCE, a unique find: the skeleton of the marine monster that threatened to eat Andromeda and got slaughtered by Perseus (for more on this story see our post on Mermaids,mermen and other strange creatures….). It was, according to Pliny, one of the marvels that he brought back to show to his fellow Romans.  The skeleton was 12 meter long and the height of the ribs exceeded that of the elephants of India. Its spine was about 40 cm thick.  Adrienne Mayor proposed that the monster brought back to Rome by Marcus Aemilius Scaurus was not a mere whale, as most would think, because whales were far too commonly encountered to really count as marvels in the Roman world. Instead, she suggests, it was probably a massive fossil skeleton of a Pleistocene or earlier creature, or something faked by combining elements of different (fossilized?) skeletons.  Whatever the identity of the creature, it was an item worth collecting and displaying for the entertainment of the inhabitants of Rome who saw their empire expanding tremendously.

The concept of the cabinets of curiosities changes meanings over time. This is vividly described in the introduction of a fascinating book called Conchophilia: shells, art and curiosity in Early Modern Europe. It is, however, still alive and kicking.  Museum exhibitions such as MoMA’s “Wunderkammer: a Century of Curiosities”, movies, such as the anthology television series “Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities” (2022), or our own collections of favorite, evocative, fascinating, or strange things are some of its modern expressions.

Important Note: writing about the so-called Age of Exploration is a tricky endeavor. Many of the expressions used in the literature, especially that of older days, but even those that we habitually use in our everyday life are fraught with biases and eurocentrism!  The “newly discovered lands” for instance were not really unknown before Europeans went there.  They were already inhabited and known to their own people and part of networks of trade and cultural contacts.  The “exotic” is another example of a tricky, loaded, notion that not only refers to things related to distant, foreign regions and cultures, but often surrounds them with a mystique, glamour and fantasy that only exists in the minds of the people who imagined it.  Such words and expressions, however, reflect the mentality of the time under discussion very powerfully.  So, we do not avoid them here, but we just place them in inverted comas to show that their use was historically specific.

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