A Cabinet of Curiosities (1800 to 1900 England)

Wood and curiosities

48.00cm wide 59.50cm high 32.50cm deep (18.90 inches wide23.43 inches high12.80 inches deep)

A fascinating accumulation of objects, specimens and curiosities representing the world in miniature. All carefully placed in a mahogany cabinet where the interested visitor would be expected to examine each object in detail and subsequently wonder at these 'marvels' and 'rarities'.

A Cabinet of Curiosities
A fine Victorian mahogany and boxwood strung eight drawer table cabinet containing numerous labelled items of natural history, polished agates, minerals and fossils, shells and corals, botanical specimens: ‘a gulf weed 1882’ contained in a glass phial of sea water, tribal artefacts ‘an Australian aboriginal letter’, antiquities and collected curiosities. Many objects with interesting handwritten ink labels including: ‘Carib chisels – implements of shell – stone hammer ….. from Cava via Barbados [Sic] now 250 ft above sea level’ and ‘A piece of a bandage of Egyptian Linen unwound from the arm of a mummy at Thebes on the Nile, February 1867. Between two and three thousand years old. C Wallace’
Second half of the 19th Century

Size: 59.5 cm high, 48 cm wide, 32.5 cm deep – 23½ ins high, 19 ins wide, 12¾ ins deep