An elaborately crafted and decorated tomahawk from somewhere along the north American east coast: how did it end up in the royal collections in Stockholm in the late seventeenth century? What does it say about the Swedish kingdom’s colonial ambitions and desires? What questions does it raise from its present place in a display cabinet in the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm? This book is about the tomahawk and other objects like it, acquired in colonial contact zones and displayed by Swedish elites in the seventeenth century. Its first part situates the objects in two distinct but related spaces: the expanding space of the colonial world, and the exclusive space of the Kunstkammer. The second part traces the objects’ physical and epistemological transfer from the Kunstkammer to the modern museum system. In the final part, colonial objects are considered at the centre of a heated debate over the present state of museums, and their possible futures.

Exquisitely illustrated, the first thorough history of these astonishing Early Modern cabinets of curiosities.
 
Kunstkammer, art and curiosity cabinets housed in a dedicated room or suite of chambers, were often filled with thousands of diverse and sometimes shocking objects reflecting the bounty of nature and human creativity. These could range from a cherry pit carved with dozens of faces to an intricate drinking cup fashioned from a rhinoceros horn. Whether as a setting for personal contemplation or as a manifestation of the wealth and prestige of its owners, these proto-museums dazzled visitors of the time. This book offers the first in-depth comparative examination of the history, theory, organization, and character of the major Kunstkammern in the Holy Roman Empire.