According to A catalogue descriptive of the various curiosities to be seen at Don Saltero’s coffee-house and tavern, in Chelsea (London, [1795]), the owner displayed roughly 800 "curiosities." Among the items you could see there were a piece of Queen Catharine's skin, a handkerchief "made of the asbestos rock, which fire cannot consume," mouse skeletons, Turkish dice, a piece of an unidentified saint's bone, "a piece of rotten wood, not to be consumed by fire," consecrated wafers, "the tarantula, or spider from Tarantum in Italy, the bite whereof occasions madness and death, and is curable only by music," Chinese playing cards, a tiger's tusk, "a large piece of a child's skin," a white sparrow, a "Chinese rocket," "Manna, from Canaan," "the head of an Egyptian," a pincushion that belonged to Mary Queen of Scots, her watch, "A surprising large moth from Constantinople," a "curious small starved mouse," a whale embryo, a beaver's head, another tarantula, "An Indian pipe of peace, called by the natives the calumet," a Chinese compass, an antelope embryo, a "curious lock of a China man's hair," a bat skeleton, "brain stones," "petrified rain," a "cinder from the burning mountain Vesuvius," porcupine quills, a "very small starved frog," a petrified lamb, "A Scotch pebble from Arthur's seat, near Edinburgh, cut for the top of a snuff box," a "Chinese lady's wedding shoe," hickory nuts, "the pope's candle, with which he curses heretics," a "Book of philosophy, in the Chinese language, called the book of knowledge," a "pair of drawers of a Chinese lady," ostrich legs, a "dried cat," a "Spanish apparatus, or belt, to prevent cuckoldom, commonly called a Spanish padlock," a mail shirt worn by a Knight Templar, a pair of snow shoes, a flamingo's head and legs, a "String of Romanish beads," a "Ball of hair taken out of the maw of an ox," a bear's paw, an elephant ear, William III's coronation shoes, a "Tartar lady's shoe," a "Pair of Turkish woman's shoes," sundry other shoes, Queen Elizabeth's stirrup, her "work basket," her chambermaid's hat, the "king of Morocco's sword of state," the "flaming sword of William and Conqueror," "Two ancient broad arrows of Robin Hood," a Turkish pistol, a monkey fetus, a snake fetus, an armadillo fetus, and an "Indian canoe." The catalogue also provided a "complete LIST of the BENEFACTORS to DON SALTERO'S Coffee-Room of Rarities." though it doesn't say who gave what. I wonder whether Don Saltero ever turned down a gift or declined to exhibit it.

Don Saltero's collection reminds one of the fictional Chinese encyclopedia in Jorge Luis Borges's short story, "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins," a tale made famous by Michel Foucault, in which the encyclopedia entry for animals includes "'(a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.'" Foucault comments, "In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that." (Foucault, xv)

But is our surprise in reviewing the objects collected by Don Saltero, or the seemingly random categories of "Chinese" thought in Borges and Foucault, so different from the frisson experienced by a gawking patron of the Chelsea coffeehouse? And are we so different in our own collections of stuff? When we bring back "souvenirs" from vacation, or just crap from Target that we never get around to using, are we so different from Don Saltero? If you or I made a catalogue of the objects in our garage or attic or basement or bottom dresser drawer, how rational would it look? What exactly are we doing when we collect stuff? Don Saltero's curiosities displayed his sophistication, his worldliness, but above all his ability to acquire things.