About Objects & Curiosities in Art
Books, vessels, instruments, shells and unusual possessions can reveal habits of looking as well as historical ideas about knowledge and taste. In a still life, their relationships may be as important as the identity of any single object.
An unfamiliar form should not automatically be labelled ritual or occult. Read source descriptions and compare the work's date and setting. Related still-life, scholarly and natural-history pages offer different ways of understanding a collection within an image.
