A Brief History of the Curio Cabinet

In the last newsletter we explored whatnots and etageres, which were used to display tchotchkes and knick knacks in the 16th and 17th Centuries by the common folk.   In about the same period, the rich and the well to do had curio cabinets, which referred to entire rooms where they stored and displayed what they called curios.  Curios were thecollections of things that they may have had; not unlike tchotchkes and knick knacks, but you couldn’t tell them that.  The rooms were usually designed and built with glass panels to protect the belongings from the curious and this is where we get our modern curio cabinets of today.