In 1638, the German traveller Georg Stirn recorded his visit to the home of Englishman John Tradescant in South Lambeth, London. Tradescant gave his guest a tour of his “Cabinet of Curiosities” (cabinet being used in the archaic sense of a small private room), where Stirn was shown (among other things) a piece of wood from the cross of Christ, the robe of the King of Virginia, and the hand of a mermaid.<sup>1</sup> <br><br>The cabinets of curiosities of Renaissance Europe were the precursors to modern museums. Their scope was encyclopaedic, at a time when the aim of collecting the whole of nature into a microcosm seemed achievable. It was a way to have the world in one’s pocket: the finest Italian tapestries draped above animal skulls, scientific instruments of cartography alongside vials of powdered unicorn horn. <br><br>These early collections, unlike today’s museums, had organisational principles based on Renaissance philosophy rather than scientific classification. Tradescant sought “any thing that Is strange”,<sup>2</sup> which was then divided broadly into “Natural” and “Artificial”. The Grand Duke of Tuscany Francesco I de’ Medici, by comparison, kept his collection of miscellaneous riches in a secret chamber next to his bedroom, organised by the elements, so that the collector, when stood in the middle, was at the centre of their own universe,<sup>3</sup> illustrating the Renaissance impulse to accumulate and place oneself within a microcosm of the world.<br><br>As for Tradescant's collection, it formed the nucleus of Oxford University's Ashmolean Museum: the world's first purpose-built public museum.<br>