Cabinet of Curiosities - 11th Edition

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

Dorothy Parker

Welcome to the November 2008 Edition of the Cabinet of Curiosities, the Carnival that celebrates the stories behind all the stuff in and around our lives, the collections we make of our stuff and the ways we display these to the world. Thank you to Tim Abbott for letting me guest edit this Edition and for assisting me.

A fitting start for this Edition is DancingPerfectlyFree’s take on the Museum of Modern Art’s ‘MoMA by Night’ in Wunderkammer: A Century of Curiosities.

Then Dorene Paul presents "Die Gartenlaube" at Sandusky History. It’s quite amazing how much history can be learned, starting just from the cover of one 1870 magazine.

Trip to Kanyakumari: Chapter 1: Vivekananda Rock Memorial, Kanyakumari and Thiruvalluvar Statue, Kanyakumari: Part 4 is posted at AdmirableIndia.com. Among the wonders there is the 133 feet tall stone sculpture of the Tamil poet and saint Tiruvalluvar, author of the Thirukkural.

PodBlack presents Women and Superstitions - Part Four posted at PodBlack Cat. She says, "My blogpost revolves around my Daruma doll, and how it contributes to an investigation of superstitious beliefs - particularly ones from Asian countries!"

From my own cupboard comes Not For Spying After All at CanadaGenealogy, or, Jane’s Your Aunt.

Greg Laden presents My Friend Curly and the President Elect posted at Greg Laden's Blog. Being an on again, off again philatelist myself, I appreciated this. And, it’s very true, isn’t it, our collections are thought to say a lot about us.

From Curious Expeditions comes The Curious Playboy, a closer look at the Vanderbilt Museum in Long Island, New York – “a museum of a museum” just as it was in 1922. Worth preserving.

And in contrast, the curiosity cabinet at The Grey Lodge is full of handmade curiosities – none are the ‘real thing’ but would you have known that?

Artist Nick from New Brunswick shows his fascination with the idea of the Cabinet de curiosités which “presents a multitude of rare or strange objects representing the three kingdoms: the animal, vegetable and mineral, in addition to human achievements” [translated from French] in his own work, shown in Presque finies.

And then there is Tiny Kitchen = Tiny Combo Units posted at Making This Home. This isn’t my usual kind of reading, but I love it! I’ve been waiting forever for the ‘kitchen of the future’ I was promised at the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, but that’s passé (or maybe retro) now. Which kitchen objects will we be displaying on our collectors’ shelves in 20 years?

And to wrap up, Baltic Design in Here They Come points out some collectibles of the future from the latest graduates of the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherland, including one look at a very personalized back brace by Francesca Lanzavecchia and a very current style of Cabinet of Curiosities by Jon Stam.

The next edition of the Cabinet of Curiosities will be back with originator Timothy Abbott at Walking The Berkshires. Submissions for the next Cabinet of Curiosities can be made to him directly, or via the carnival submission form.

For a look at all the past Cabinet of Curiosities Carnivals, see here.