The John Tradescants

March 14, 2005 6:30 AM

"A Collection of Rarities" The John Tradescants (Elder and Younger) lived in London in the 16th and 17th centuries. Adventurous travellers, diplomats, horticultural pioneers, polymaths, they were also collectors, acquiring (and asking their friends to acquire) specimens of the wonders of the world. Their growing collection was housed in a large house -- "The Ark" -- in Lambeth, London. The Ark was the prototypical Cabinet of Curiosity or Wunderkammer, a collection of rare and strange objects. The Tradescant's collection was eventually transferred to -- and some say it was swindled out of them by -- Elias Ashmole, who used it to start The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The Tradescants are buried in St. Mary's Churchyard, Lambeth, now home to the Museum of Garden History.
posted by carter (2 comments total)

In 1638, a detailed description of The Ark and its contents was recorded by a German traveller named Georg Christoph Stirn. His account was as follows:

In the museum of Mr. John Tradescant are the following things: first in the courtyard there lie two ribs of a whale, also a very ingenious little boat of bark; then in the garden all kinds of foreign plants, which are to be found in a special little book which Mr. Tradescant has had printed about them. In the museum itself we saw a salamander, a chameleon, a pelican, a remora, a lanhado from Africa, a white partridge, a goose which has grown in Scotland on a tree, a flying squirrel, another squirrel like a fish, all kinds of bright colored birds from India, a number of things changed into stone, amongst others a piece of human flesh on a bone, gourds, olives, a piece of wood, an ape's head, a cheese, etc; all kinds of shells, the hand of a mermaid, the hand of a mummy, a very natural wax hand under glass, all kinds of precious stones, coins, a picture wrought in feathers, a small piece of wood from the cross of Christ, pictures in perspective of Henry IV and Louis XIII of France, who are shown, as in nature, on a polished steel mirror when this is held against the middle of the picture, a little box in which a landscape is seen in perspective, pictures from the church of S. Sophia in Constantinople copied by a Jew into a book, two cups of rinocerode, a cup of an E. Indian alcedo which is a kind of unicorn, many Turkish and other foreign shoes and boots, a sea parrot, a toad-fish, an elk's hoof with three claws, a bat as large as a pigeon, a human bone weighing 42 lbs., Indian arrows such as are used by the executioners in the West Indies- when a man is condemned to death, they lay open his back with them and he dies of it, an instrument used by the Jews in circumcision, some very light wood from Africa, the robe of the King of Virginia, a few goblets of agate, a girdle such as the Turks wear in Jerusalem, the passion of Christ carved very daintily on a plumstone, a large magnet stone, a S. Francis in wax under glass, as also a S. Jerome, the Pater Noster of Pope Gregory XV, pipes from the East and West Indies, a stone found in the West Indies in the water, whereon are graven Jesus, Mary and Joseph, a beautiful present from the Duke of Buckingham, which was of gold and diamonds affixed to a feather by which the four elements were signified, Isidor's MS of de natura hominis, a scourge with which Charles V is said to have scourged himself, a hat band of snake bones'.

posted by carter at 6:32 AM on March 14, 2005

Thanks for these links carter: I'm always fascinated by this stuff. The Tradescant collection may have been the earliest major English cabinet of curiosities, but there were other famous collections in Europe that preceded it, for example Emperor Rudolf II's kunst/wunderkammer was well-established at Prague by the end of the 16th Century.
posted by misteraitch at 7:30 AM on March 14, 2005