A Cabinet of Rarities: Antiquarian Obsessions and the Spell of Death

With breathtaking virtuosity and a unique, dreamlike vision, Érik Desmazières – a master of contemporary printmaking re-creates interiors, cityscapes and fantastical compositions.

Rich in atmosphere, refreshingly strange and exquisitely produced, A Cabinet of Rarities is a bibliophilic treasure for anyone whose imagination is fired by the esoteric and macabre.

Desmazières has delved deep into the arcane theme of cabinets of curiosities. Taking as his starting point the melancholy musings of the seventeenth-century antiquary Sir Thomas Browne, he has reinterpreted these shadowy collections of the rare and bizarre – precious corals, shrunken heads and magical artefacts – as meditations on the vanity of earthly life. Death and decay are never far below the surface, as a depiction of Sir Thomas Browne’s own skull, disinterred and displayed in a museum until the 1920s, reminds us.

The erudite text by Patrick Mauriès traces the preoccupations of Browne and his fellow collectors through history, showing how abstruse objects and spectres of death have now entered the cultural mainstream.