At some hazy point in Europe’s past, the objective truth didn’t matter as much as it does today. Really rich folks collected (real and fake) religious artifacts, objects of art, biological marvels, and anything else you can imagine into wunderkammer, or cabinets of wonder.
The contents of these cabinets and other related marvels, like the cat piano above, are celebrated at the Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society. This mystery-enshrouded blog celebrates the life and ideas of one of the great collectors and creators of oddities, Athanasius Kircher.
What’s most wonderful to me is the way that these objects are so profoundly liminal… they refuse to be classified as “real” or “fake.” It’s an idea that’s deeply related to The New Sincerity.
That’s what I was thinking about when I did an interview on this Sound broadcast with Ricky Jay, the brilliant magician and historian. For a while, Jay did radio commentaries about this sort of stuff, like this one about a genius pig. I tried to get them for The Sound, but he wouldn’t go for it.
See also: The Museum of Jurassic Technology