Royal Cabinet of Curiosities
Description
The Royal Cabinet of Curiosities was a museum in The Hague, founded in 1816 by King Willem I. The museum took the form of a cabinet of curiosities, and its collection consisted of various objects, including many from the colonies. Ultimately, it housed a wide array of items: objects related to Dutch history, Oriental decorative arts, ethnographic objects, and naturalia.
At its foundation were the collections of Chinese and Japanese objects from Jean Theodore Royer, Jan Cock Blomhoff, and Johan van Overmeer Fisscher. To these, the stadtholder collections were added by King Willem III. Throughout its existence, the museum received various donations and made acquisitions.
In 1883, the museum was dissolved, and its collection was distributed among several museums. The majority went to the Rijks Etnografisch Museum (nowadays the Wereldmuseum Leiden) and the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst (which merged into the Rijksmuseum). Small numbers of objects were transferred to the National Museum of Antiquities, the Koninklijk Kabinet van Munten, Penningen en Gesneden Stenen, the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie, the Rijksmuseum van Geologie en Mineralogie, and the Rijksherbarium.
Provenance research
The original administration of the collection, created by the first director Reinier van de Kasteele, disappeared after his son Abraham van de Kasteele succeeded him in 1840. At that time, many objects disappeared or got lost as well. The third and final director, David van der Kellen, who took office in 1876, was assigned to put things in order.
The archive of the Royal Cabinet of Curiosities is preserved in the Noord-hollands Archief as part of the Rijksmuseum archive. It contains, among other things, correspondence regarding donations and purchases. The appendices include detailed notes with convenient summaries of the correspondence. Please note that the KKZ correspondence also concerns items that were offered to the collection, but ultimately not purchased.
Additionally, there are archival documents at the Nationaal Archief, written by officials from the Ministry of the Interior. These documents relate to acquisitions, as well as the dissolution of the Royal Cabinet of Curiosities and the distribution of the collection among various museums. Within the letter archive of the Ministry of the Interior, reports and letters can be found regarding offered donations and sales. These can be traced through the indices on the reports.
Resources
- NL-HaNA 2.04.01 4030
- NL-HlmNHA 476 1076Documents concerning the handling of the distribution of objects from the former Royal Cabinet of Curiosities between the Rijks Ethnografisch Museum in Leiden and the Nederlandsch Museum van Geschiedenis en Kunst, 1885-1888. — https://hdl.handle.net/21.12102/2472CF6620004E9E878802D9406CE688
- NL-HlmNHA 476 11.1Access from the archives of the Rijksmuseum containing all kinds of documents relating to the acquisition, loan and restoration of objects. — https://hdl.handle.net/21.12102/87E110A9A147458AB8E59021D9186701
- NL-HlmNHA 476 5Concerns the inventory of the archive of the Royal Cabinet of Curiosities within the archive of the Rijksmuseum and its legal predecessors. — https://hdl.handle.net/21.12102/2422AD00C789442FAE99779C81E66552
- NL-HlmNHA 476 874-875Contains the concepts of the inventory of the collections of Royer, Cock Blomhoff and Van Overmeer Fisscher. Accessible online. — https://hdl.handle.net/21.12102/21D672ACA1794CFC9DAABE5F116BC5BC
- NL-HaNA 2.04.01 4925-4954
- NL-HaNA 2.04.13 2.2.4.1.2.06