Our cabinet was curated in summer 2025 by the project’s student partners. Each item in the cabinet was chosen for its relevance to opening up global narratives in 17th and 18th-century salon culture. Inside this authentic 1740s oak cabinet, you will find a sugar bowl and chinoiserie coffee cups, shells and tobacco pipes, pages from books, fragments of textiles that might once have been dresses or seat covers, and much more …
Read our Student Salon catalogue to find out more about the cabinet and its contents, or check out some of our blog posts.
- Dutch Table Cabinet in Oak, c. 1740, 32 x 56 x 32 cm
- Early 17th-century silver spoon with a carved fish handle, 9.3 cm, weight 21.4g
- 18th-century chinoiserie, ‘waiting China-man pattern’, sugar bowl, c. 1760, Worcester origins, 12 x 6 cm
- Porcelain coffee cups and a tea cup (18th century)
- Pearl fishing original copper engraved print, Alain Mallet, ‘Description de l’Univers’, volume one, 1683, 10.2 x 14.3 cm
- English map of Asia made by London cartographer John Senex, c. 1749, 20 x 15 cm
- 17th-century Dutch deft tile with ship, 11.5 x 12.7 cm
- 17th-century trade bead, 3.3 x 1 cm, weight 3.64 grams
- Blue milkweed beetle specimen in resin, native to North America, 4.4 x 2.8 cm
- Stellaria solaris/sun carrier shell, 9 cm
- Money cowrie shells
- Engravings of cinnamon and pepper from John Gerard’s Herbal, 1597 (1633 edition)
- Fabric samples (18th century)
- Tobacco pipes, 17th and 18th century
- Paua (Haliotis Iris) shells from New Zealand, 21st century
- Harakeke (flax, Phormium tenax) seeds, 21st century