Cabinet of Curiosities by Mary Hoffman

We have a "Cabinet of curiosities" post on the 30th of each month that has 31 days, i.e. seven months in every year. Usually one of our number writes about an object she possesses, perhaps something handed down through the family and carrying a host of personal associations. Some of them are objects of obscure historical significance.

Others are simply items seen in a collection of a museum or gallery and just blatantly lusted after.

Today I want to write about the objects I assemble around me when ever I start writing a new book. Of course the main thing is other books - all my research materials kept in a plastic crate under the coffee table in my study, where I can easily reach anything I need. I'm not precious about notebooks - though I do like a beautiful notebook. I am happy to write my research notes on an ordinary reporter's notebook, spiral bound at the top. And especially now I have found Scrivener, I can faff around to my heart's content on the laptop when the real business of writing begins.

No - I'm talking about specific objects. I won't call them "inspirational" as I loathe the very thought. They are more like focus points to stop my attention wandering off to other books I might write, other things I might do.  I can't remember when I acquired this habit - probably with the Stravaganza sequence of novels set in Italian cities in an alternative universe.

The characters were transported to Talia (my parallel world version of Italy) by the possession of talismans and hunting for the right one for each book was important each time - a marbled notebook, a flying horse, a blue perfume bottle, a leather-bound book, a bag of silver mosaic tesserae and a paperknife in the shape of a small sword.

But the talismans, although important for the narrative, were not necessarily my object. For example, I didn't acquire the model of the black winged horse until after City of Stars was published, when a fan found one and gave it to me. While I was writing the book it was this tile, bought in Siena that worked for me.

I bought a tapestry in France to commemorate the writing of The Falconer's Knot, a small wooden trebuchet in John Lewis toy department when I was writing Troubadour and a marble miniature in the Accademia shop in Florence when I was working on David. (The marble base comes from Carrara, like the block Michelangelo turned into David - though I bought it in Pisa).

My most recent historical novel, to be published next April, is The Ravenmaster's Boy and it has very satisfactory  flibbertigibbet-controllers: two plush ravens from the Tower of London. I spent some time there with the current Ravenmaster, Chris Skaife, and his birds.

Huginn and Muninn, my plush ravens

Me and my favourite Tower raven

Chris Skaife, Ravenmaster at the Tower of London

I am currently writing a short novel about the model for the Mona Lisa but have not found a focus object. So if you hear of a daring theft from the Louvre ...

What objects do writer friends like to keep about them and are they specific to the work in hand?

Cabinet of Curiosities by Catherine Hokin

My chosen item for the cabinet of curiosities is perhaps not such an usual choice for a writer as it is a book, in this case a 1933 edition of the Arthur Rackham Fairy Book. It probably ranks as my prize possession and the first thing I would grab if we ever got hit by a fire - or more likely a flood given I live in Glasgow.

 Arthur Rackham Fairy Book

Firstly apologies for the photograph: the copy has been well-loved and its once white cover and gold lettering have faded badly; it also bears more than one set of grubby fingerprints. I'm glad of that - it is clearly no museum-piece and I hope it passed through many happy hands before landing, very recently, in mine.

Arthur Rackham was the leading illustrator in what was known as the 'Golden Age' of British book illustration which ran from roughly 1890-1914. He is particularly known for his fairy drawings with his most famous works including Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1908) and the posthumous Wind in the Willows (1940). He began his illustrating career in 1893 and was widely exhibited and bought in his lifetime. After 1918 the market for lavishly-illustrated books collapsed in Britain but Rackham's work is once again in vogue and editions of his work are highly collectible (and frighteningly expensive).

 Titania

I first came across his work when I was an impoverished student taking my over-active imagination and empty purse fantasy shopping in antique book shops. I fell in love with his fairies: they were mischievous, wicked and strong - no soppy Victorian fluff here. I was no artist (I learnt to appreciate his technique, which combined woodcut-style work with advances in colour-printing, much later) but I was entranced by the mix of pen and ink drawings, watercolours and line sketches he sprinkled liberally through the stories. I also loved his women - I once played Mustard Seed (as a silver-clad scouse punk, as you do) in a production of Midsummer Night's Dream and the director took his inspiration for Titania from the Rackham depiction of her striding away, chaos in her wake. It's still one of my favourite pictures and hangs in my study.

 Signature

So why is this edition special? It is hard to get complete original editions of Rackham's work anymore - most of them seem to have been dissected to feed the antique stalls in Portobello Market - so owning a copy of one at all is pretty good. But this is no ordinary edition, it has been signed by the great man  himself. There is something about a signed copy of a book that makes it intensely personal. As a writer, being asked to sign your novel is incredibly flattering - a real rock star moment. To be honest, I'm at the stage where I'll sign them whether people ask me to or not. So to own a book signed by someone whose work I've loved for years is thrilling and, with a book that has clearly been so well-loved, it is hard not to weave  stories round it. There is a pink smudge across the signature which I rather hope belongs to the Pamela Taylor who this edition was presented to in 1935. It looks suspiciously like lipstick and I want to imagine she was so excited, she kissed it. Which, I'm not ashamed to say, was what I did - I was probably meant to kiss the husband who was responsible for the gift, but he didn't seem to mind. 

 Self-portrait

The stories are wonderful, a mixture of traditional English and French fairy tales and the Arabian Nights, but it is the illustrations that make me go back to this book over and over again. They are witty and beautiful with just the right amount of edginess, the perfect Rackham mix and extend even to his 'self-portrait'. I love the work but I am also increasingly intrigued by the man. A little like our own Glasgow artistic hero, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his wife Margaret MacDonald, it seems marriage had quite an influence on Rackham's work. In 1903 he married the portrait painter Edyth Starkie who he apparently regarded as his most stimulating, if severest, critic. I fell in love with her most famous painting (The Spotted Dress) in the Musee D'Orsay without having any clue about their relationship until very recently. When you know the link, it's hard not to see a connection between their work and it's certainly something I hope to explore at some point in far more detail. My cabinet choice continues to feed my curiosity - now I've just got to find a way to pay for what could prove a costly addiction...  

Cabinet of Curiosities by Katherine Webb

My first ever offering to the Cabinet of Curiosities are these very plain, rather dented pewter jugs:

The largest stands at 10cm tall, the smallest at a mere 6cm; or, more importantly, stamped onto the handles are the volumes they hold: 1 deciliter, 1/2 deciliter and 2 centiliter. Any guesses as to what they were for?

I bought these jugs in Italy while I was there researching The Night Falling a few years ago, from an old lady in the town of Gioia del Colle in the far south of the country. I had just been to look around a wonderful private museum called the Museo Della Civilta' Contadina - or Museum of Rural Life. This vast, private collection has been put together and is run by a man called Vito Santoiemma, and fills several huge warehouses in what used to be the family's sawmill in the town. It holds an astonishing array of objects related to every aspect of rural life in that part of Italy in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and I got lost in it for hours.

Inside the museum. The jars on the floor with the wooden lids are called prisor, and are what most families would have had as their only toilet. It had to be carried out and emptied daily, into a slops barrel which was then dragged out of town and used to fertilise the fields. Disease, unsurprisingly, was rife.

At the end of my visit, I asked if there was any small thing I could buy to take back with me, and was told that an old lady (I never did get her name!) might have something to sell. These jugs appeared, and I was asked how much I was willing to pay for them - always a tricky question when you have absolutely no idea of an item's worth - both materially and to the person selling it! She seemed both delighted and bemused by my offer of Euro20, and so I had a piece of history to bring home with me.

The smallest jug, with 2 centiliter stamped onto the handle.

I've written before about the shocking living conditions experienced by the vast majority of people in Southern Italy in the first half of the twentieth century. A few wealthy, often absent, landlords owned all the land and all the housing, and the peasants - some 80% of the rest of the population - had no means to live but to pay for the rent on tiny, inadequate apartments by selling their labour in the fields for a daily rate. They were exhausted, hungry, angry, and powerless, and when they rose up in 1921 and 1922, in a broadly socialist movement, they were crushed again by the rise of fascism.

The milkman's bicycle in Vito Santoiemma's museum, and other dairy-related items.

My jugs date from the years immediately after this, after Mussolini came to power in 1922. These jugs were given out as part of a new system of rationing intended to alleviate the problem of the poor simply starving to death in years of drought and bad harvest - and also to conserve produce that was desperately scarce all over Italy after the First World War. It seems impossible to imagine Italy being short of olive oil, but that is what the jugs were for - the rationing of olive oil. How many calories does the 2 centiliter jug represent? I estimate maybe about 100. I don't know how many people that was supposed to feed, but I do know that this was a weekly ration, not a daily one. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence of women selling their bodies to corrupt officials for an increase in the ration for their family.

So perhaps my piece of portable history is a bit dark in nature, and links directly back to dire times for one particular family. But there is always something so emotive and powerful about actually holding an object from a time that has now passed out of reach, and I kept the jugs on the shelf by my desk as I wrote my novel.

Cabinet of Curiosities: Taxidermy by Sarah Gristwood

Other people have friends who take up tennis or tatting. I have friends who take up taxidermy. (Also skull collection: ‘Can I call you back? I’m beheading a badger’, has to be one of the best can’t-talk-now lines in history.) Drop in on Jane for coffee, and you find the emptied skin of a magpie draped over the kitchen tap to dry, the way a tea towel might be. An open taxidermy supply catalogue advertises plastic eyes and false tongues, each modelled for the species, precisely.

Sarah's stuffed jay

Not that I have a problem with that - on the contrary, the stuffed jay she gave me is one of my favourite possessions. The first thing any taxidermist today is keen to tell you is that they are using creatures which died naturally. Roadkill, birds brought in wounded to the local vet. Or, in the case of some professionals, beloved pets whose owners can’t quite bear to say goodbye.

Of course it wasn’t always that way, as the heads on the wall of any country house can testify. But then the form has gone through a lot of changes, since some stuffed rarity was first part of any collector’s cabinet of curiosities. The oldest piece of taxidermy in existence is said to be the crocodile suspended from the roof of a church in Lombardy, and documented as having been taken down (later found stored in the roof) in 1534. The horse of Sweden’s king Gustav Adolphus, shot from under him in the Thirty Years War, and skinned and mounted as a trophy by his German enemies, can still be seen today.

The first big boost for European taxidermy came from the explorations of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the pressure was on to find a way of proving to those back home just how strange far flung nature could be, (Or trying to prove - when the skin and a sketch of a duck billed platypus was sent back from Australia in 1798, it was dismissed as a hoax.) Specimens could be sent home preserved in alcohol, to be skinned, cleaned, and filled with some kind of aromatic packing - herbs, hops, tobacco; later much improved with an arsenic soap - meant to keep the insects away.

What was at first the preserve of the scientific and the wealthy soon became a museum staple: Bullock’s Museum in London at the start of the nineteenth century advertised ‘the Lofty Giraffe, the Lion, the Elephant . . . as ranging in their native wilds’. When taxidermist John Gould put up twenty four cases of humming birds as rival attraction to the Great Exhibition he got 75,000 visitors. But by then taxidermy was moving on in several different ways.

New techniques - such as the creation of moulds onto which the skin could be arranged, in whatever pose - allowed more naturalistic museum display. This, in the hands of great taxidermists like Rowland Ward, was the start of the dioramas on which many of us grew up (and in England places like the Powell-Cotton Museum in Kent, the Natural History Museum at Tring still show their collections with pride; while the National Museum of Scotland is rare in still having a working department of taxidermy). In America Carl Akeley created ‘Jumbo’ and ‘the Feejee mermaid’ for the great showman P.T. Barnard before moving on to the American Museum of Natural History.

Hares in a bookshop in Stamford

Naturalism, however, was never the goal of a whole other strand of Victorian taxidermy. A young and impressionable Walter Potter had seen Hermann Ploucquet’s anthropomorphic displays at the Great Exhibition and was struck all of a heap. Potter’s most famous tableau showed the death of Cock Robin. Guinea pigs playing cricket, kittens at a tea party - nothing was too bizarre for his imagination, and children were still revelling in his creations long after his death in 1918.

Much about the Victorian sensibility - and the Victorian fetishism of death - seems strange to us today. But perhaps it was yet another strand of Victorian and early twentieth century taxidermy that did most to dismiss the form from fashion by the latter part of the last century. That was the huge number of heads collected by ‘big game hunters’; shot without qualm and displayed without artistry. Taxidermy begun itself to look like a relic of the past; while the spread of the motion picture camera meant a Western public could see those same exotic beasts, not framed in a case, but running free.

(That said, of course, fashion never changes completely - or not in my home town anyway. When I was a child in Dover, the pride of the town museum was a stuffed polar bear, donated by the relatives of an Arctic explorer as recently as 1960. It stood in the entrance, just where mothers used to park the pram, sometimes with the baby still inside it. So the child awoke and looked up into the snarling jaws of this rearing monster, claws outstretched . . . Explains a lot about those of us from Dover, actually.)

But in the last years, there has been a widespread resurgence in the popularity of taxidermy - and in the creativity with which it is used. The original shock value of the stuffed birds swirling around above the model’s head, in a fantastical piece of Alexander McQueen millinery from 2001, has dwindled until a dusty decades old bison’s head seems to leer down at you from the wall of every fashionable bar, every house interior in a magazine spread.

At the Hayward Gallery in 2012, artist David Shrigley’s taxidermied Jack Russell held up a placard reading ‘I’m Dead’. Damien Hirst, anybody? As the art critic Brian Sewell said, ‘there may well be more art in a stuffed pike than a dead sheep’; while artist and animal activist Angela Singer makes a point with her use of vintage taxidermy.

A recent TV documentary, All Creatures Great and Stuffed, went straight for the shock horror stories - the man who spreadeagled the corpses of cats, and tried to make them fly. But the work of someone like artist Polly Morgan seems both beautiful and significant to me. A handful of taxidermy quail chicks bursting out of a telephone receiver, obviously in mid-squawk. A taxidermy fox with a silicone octopus bursting out from its belly, Alien-style; the octopus itself being ‘pollinated’ by stuffed wrens. Yes, in a way it’s sinister; but so is nature, actually; Morgan was first inspired by the decaying corpses she saw on a trip to the Serengeti. She like others argues against any idea of disrespect to the animal. ‘It’s a form of recycling as far as I can see.’

I think it’s the respect that for me is the key - the reason it seems strange to me to shrink from taxidermy, while eating meat and wearing leather shoes. The reason I’d be repulsed by an umbrella stand made from an elephant’s foot, while still cherishing my jay . . . All right, so it’s a sliding scale - those anthropomorphising pieces of Walter Potter’s do seem strange to me. But when taxidermy is done right, it is a gesture of rage against the dying of the light, isn’t it, really?

Stuffed crocodile belonging to History Girl Clare Mulley

My Mysterious Mayan Shell - Katherine Langrish

Here's one for our Cabinet of Curiosities. I would be very glad to know what this is.

Well, in a sense I know what it is. It's part of a very large shell, engraved with Mayan figures and glyphs. I bought it about fifteen years ago in a junk shop in a town called Horseheads in upstate New York, for fifty dollars.  Before I bought it, I turned it over, half expecting to see a legend on the back reading 'A Present from Guatamala City'. But no:

 

I asked the owners of the shop if they knew anything about it.  Was it old?  Or a modern souvenir? What did it mean?  They hadn't a clue. They'd shown it to someone at Cornell University who'd told them that the scene depicted on it is a trial.  But that was it.  That was all they knew.  I have to say that the characters look stern enough.  Is this the plaintiff?

Is this the judge?

 

Is this tall resplendent person standing behind him, gesturing, arguing his case?

And why is there another shell depicted on this shell?

All I know for sure it that it's a beautiful object, the workmanship is wonderful, and I'm lucky to have it. But I'd love to know more. If there's anyone out there who can tell me anything about it - do get in touch!

Paul Dowswell's favourite historical character - Rudolph the second

Prague today

It's a pleasure to welcome Paul Dowswell as our guest blogger for July, especially since he gallantly accepted the brief to write about his favourite character, which all the History Girls are doing this month.

 

 About Paul: 

I've worked in publishing for over twenty five years. I went freelance in 1999 after eight years with Usborne, where I was a senior editor.
History is my specialist subject but I also enjoy writing about natural history, science, geography, in fact almost anything, apart from golf and mechanical engineering. I have a shamefully encyclopaedic knowledge of popular music,

I’ve written over 60 books for UK publishers.  I grew up in Chester and escaped to read History at London University (Goldsmiths’ College 1975-1978). After 15 years in London, I moved to Wolverhampton, where I live with my wife and daughter. I also play with a variety of bands in the pubs and clubs of the West Midlands.








My favourite character

Prague c.1

(Woodcuts and engravings from the era show that much of the city of Prague remains from Rudolph’s time).


I was at a History Association event in London recently, and broadcaster Bettany Hughes gave a speech revealing that 90% of all TV history is about the Nazis, the Egyptians or the Tudors. I’m assuming that ‘the Nazis’ includes World War Two in general, but I’ll bet another 9% is split between the Romans and The Great War, and the final 1% divvies up between everything else. I’m sure we’re a little broader in the publishing world, but those three major TV areas, and the Romans, must take up the vast majority of subjects for historical fiction too. (I’ve written about the Nazis and both the World Wars.)

Many readers like to read about what they know about, which is understandable. But those of us who write historical fiction know there’s so much that’s fascinating outside the well-ploughed areas. That’s why I chose to write about Rudolph II, the Holy Roman Emperor in late Renaissance Prague, who is a central character in my book ‘The Cabinet of Curiosities’.

I wrote ‘Cabinet’ after becoming fascinated by the Renaissance paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo – surreal and disturbing portraits, centuries ahead of their time. His most famous is Vertumnus – his depiction of Rudolph II in fruit and vegetables. A culture which produced something so magnificently strange and original sparked further investigation. I was not disappointed. Rudolph II was just as unusual as his portrait.

There’s a picture on Wiki

Here, likewise from Wiki, is a picture of the Emperor as himself.


He had a great thrusting Habsburg jaw and fleshy lips, which gave him the look of an obstinate bulldog. But he spoke quietly and patiently, without the usual princely arrogance. He seemed to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. I think Rudolph was a man who endured his life rather than enjoyed it.

He ruled over a world that was still in thrall to Aristotle, Plato and other great philosophers of the Classical Era. It didn’t seem strange to Rudolph’s contemporaries to be so influenced by a mind-set that was, even then, nearly two millennia old. Save for gunpowder, the printed word, and the discovery of the Americas, the ancient world wasn’t that different from their own. They thought the Ancients were cleverer than they were. That’s why Rudolph had a special interest in Alchemy. He and his contemporaries believe the Ancient Egyptians could turn base metals into gold. To them, alchemy was a lost art. Of course, it turned out to be a blind alley, although it did lead to the beginnings of modern Chemistry.

Golden Lane, inside Prague Castle

Many of these little houses were home to the alchemists employed by Rudolph. They worked in nearby workshops built into the Castle walls.

But Rudolph was open to new ideas as well as old. He believed, quite reasonably, that if he could gather up all the knowledge in the world it would help him understand the purpose of existence and the mind of God. To this end he developed a mania for collecting ‘wonders’. He lived in a chaotic world, his private rooms littered with extraordinary instruments and curious objects, paintings piled up against the walls, and great heaps of books. He also set aside four ball-room size halls in his palace for his collection. This great depository is known as his Cabinet of Curiosities: and it was an extraordinary collection of mechanical and scientific instruments, biological and geological specimens, paintings, engravings and holy and mythological relics. Dürer’s famous watercolour of a young hare was in there and, supposedly, nails from Noah’s Ark, feathers from a phoenix and the dagger that killed Julius Caesar.

Whilst other Cabinets of the age were just a higgledy-piggledy collection of curios, often kept in an actual cabinet, Rudolph’s vast collection was arranged in an order bordering on ‘scientific’.
Lucky for us that the collection was well documented. Some was moved to Vienna following Rudolph’s death in 1612 and some was scattered to the four corners of Europe when his Palace was looted by Swedish Troops in 1648 during the 30 Years War. Only a fraction of it can still be found in Prague.

Treasures from the Prague Museum of Decorative Arts:


Rudolph was fascinated by automata like this mechanical monkey which can play a tune on its violin. The one in the picture dates from 1800, but similar devices could be found in his Cabinet. One of his favourites was a mechanical peacock, complete with real tail feathers, which strutted around making mating calls.

Rudolph was especially interested in miniature timepieces similar to this one, and would join his craftsmen at their workbenches to try to learn their skills. Contemporaries noted his Christian modesty – an appealing trait in an all-powerful ruler.

A book from Rudolph's era

He had a vast library and was intrigued by the great variety of life on Earth.

As well as amassing his extraordinary collection, Rudolph was also a great patron of the arts and sciences. His court in Prague became an oasis for natural philosophers (as scientists were then known) in a Europe shackled by religious dogma and haunted by the Inquisition. Under Rudolph’s protection, natural philosophers could investigate and share their knowledge of the newly-emerging sciences without fear of being executed as heretics. This was an age, after all, where an astronomer could be burned at the stake for stating that the Sun was at the centre of the Solar System rather than the Earth. In his patronage of alchemy and fascination with the world, Rudolph was an early champion of the Scientific Revolution of the 17th Century.


His court attracted the liveliest minds in Europe. Among them was Rudolph’s Imperial Astronomer Tycho Brahe, and Brahe’s collaborator Johannes Kepler, who had the magnificent job title of ‘Imperial Mathematician’. Kepler went on to produce ‘The Rudolphine Tables’, named in honour of his patron and based primarily on the painstaking astronomical observation work of Brahe. These tables revolutionised the study of ‘celestial physics’ and were invaluable to the astronomers who went on to shape our understanding of the universe.

Brahe, incidentally, was a character and a half. He had a silver nose, having lost his own in a duel, and kept a pet elk, who died after it drank too much beer at a party and fell down a flight of stairs. If only the Slebs who inhabit the pages of ‘Heat’ magazine were half as interesting.

The Cabinet contained many astronomical instruments. Brahe would have used tools such as this in his observation of the heavens. Kepler, his successor, was able to make use of a telescope, an invention which arrived too late for Brahe.


Another of Rudolph’s admirable qualities could be seen in the citizens of Prague. Unique in mainland Europe, Jews, Protestants and Catholics lived and prospered side by side. Muslims too, I suspect, would have been welcome, had not the Holy Roman Empire been at war with the Ottoman Turks. Rudolph ensured the activities of the Inquisition were restricted to witchcraft cases. Unsurprisingly, he came under intense pressure from Spain, the centre of Catholic Orthodoxy, to allow the persecution of ‘heretics’ within his realm. Rudolph dealt with these earnest attempts to save the world from Satan’s clutches by keeping Spanish emissaries waiting to see him for months and even years on end. I can sympathise.

Rudolph had his faults of course. He was a shy, secretive man quite unsuited to the demands of his office. Some historians blame his ineffective leadership on the 30 Years War which broke out six years after his death. His war with the Ottoman Turks was also a disaster for his Empire and he ended his life imprisoned in his castle and stripped of his powers.

He was a major hypochondriac, convinced he was afflicted by all manner of diseases. He certainly suffered from depression, and his court physicians recognised this – they described his condition as ‘melancholy’ and would have said he had a disorder of the humours, probably too much black bile. Most likely because of his melancholia, he was a great champion of what scientists today call ‘New Age Bollocks’. He was especially fascinated in gemstones, which were thought to possess mystical powers. Lapis Lazuli, for example, was supposedly effective in ‘keeping the soul free from error, fear and envy’. Rudolph wore gemstones next to his skin and ingested them as medicine, ground to a powder. His depression plagued him throughout his life – all the more reason to admire his tolerance and passion for art and science.

I think we get our expression ‘Bohemian’ – in the sense of unconventional and freethinking – from Rudolph’s Prague. I admire his open-mindedness, especially in the face of the era’s very circumscribed religious orthodoxy, and I admire his acceptance of other creeds and cultures in a world where superstition and intolerance were regarded as cardinal virtues.

Prague castle

A goblet made from sea-snail shells

Rudolph kept many elaborate items like this in his Cabinet.
















Thanks, Paul, for this fascinating insight into a man who inspired one of your own books.