A Cabinet of Rarities: Antiquarian Obsessions and the Spell of Death

By: Desmazieres, Erik

Book Overview

The manifestation of a collector's appetite for discovering and mastering the world--represented by singular items of natural history, geology, art, or relics--cabinets of curiosities and rarities became popular in the Renaissance and were precursors to the modern museum. Largely inspired by seventeenth-century scientist and antiquary Sir Thomas Browne, whose esoteric writings have long appealed to scholars, this rare new work is a bibliophile's delight. Erik Desmazi res's contemporary etchings present a cabinet of rarities portraying a collection of the recondite, rare, and bizarre, complete with emblems of the vanity of earthly life and intimations of mortality. Death and decay are favorite subjects: a skull recalls depictions of Sir Thomas Browne's own, disinterred and displayed in a local museum until the 1920s. These abstruse objects and specters of death, subject matter once considered the preserve of specialists, have entered the cultural mainstream and have found a broad popular audience.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0500516340
• ISBN13: 9780500516348
• Release Date: November 2012
• Publisher: Thames & Hudson
• Length: 110 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 8.4" x 11.2"