Oddity Shop Origins: 400 Years of Cabinet Curiosities

Welcome To The Oddity Shop, Where The Bizarre is Always on Sale.  This week, your Curator Kara is finally tracing the origin of the oddity shop!

We trace the fascinating 400-year history of oddity shops and cabinets of curiosities, from royal gardeners collecting exotic artifacts to modern establishments displaying genuine mummies with bullet holes.

From John Tradescant the Elder created the first public oddity museum, filling his house with fossils, ancient coins, and exotic artifacts collected while working as a royal garden to Seattle's Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, which opened in 1899, and still operates today with attractions including Sylvester the mummy, confirmed through CT scans to be a real human preserved with arsenic. Modern oddity shops continue to fascinate us with their blend of history, mystery, and the macabre!

What is your favorite oddity!?

Join us for the Gothic Garden Party in the Flint Cemetery on October 4th if you're in the area - Victorian costumes encouraged!

Reference Shout Outs: 

• https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/the-museum/the-ark-gallery/ 

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musaeum_Tradescantianum

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tradescant_the_Elder

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tradescant_the_Younger

• https://lukehoney.typepad.com/the_education_of_a_garden/2012/05/the-tradescants-and-south-lambeth.html

• https://www.cabinet.ox.ac.uk/ordinary-visitors-evidence-handling

• https://britisharchaeology.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/collections/history-17thcentury.html

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Saltero%27s

• https://ukersallaboutcoffee.wordpress.com/chapter32/

• https://dralun.wordpress.com/2017/10/10/the-gimcrack-whim-collector-don-salteros-coffee-house-and-museum/

• https://bhsecglobal.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/social-life-of-coffee.pdf

• https://etheses.dur.ac.uk/14925/1/MResBRUN000832352.pdf 

• https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41516/41516-h/41516-h.htm

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Curiosity_Shop

• https://www.london-walking-tours.co.uk/dickens-london/old-curiosity-shop.htm

• https://commonplace.online/article/the-old-curiosity-shop-and-the-new-antique-store/

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake_Gold%27s_Old_Curiosity_Shop

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_Olde_Curiosity_Shop

• https://www.historylink.org/file/22526

• https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/11619

Each Week at the Oddity Shop, Your Curators Kara and Zach will bring you stories from Cryptids to Conspiracies, Cults to Curiosities, Myths to Mysteries, and so much more!

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