Cabinet of Curious Mazes: Oddities, Collections, Strange Machines & Various Things of Interest

Do you have any collections? If you do, you are not alone. Today there are people who collect just about anything you can think of. But did you know that as early as the 16th century, budding scientists, aristocrats, merchants, and even rulers amassed vast collections comprised of anything from natural wonders to historical and cultural artifacts? These collections filled entire rooms and were the forerunners of current-day museums. These collections were known as cabinets of curiosities or Wunderkammer. Although some collectors were in pursuit of true scientific knowledge, others created them to impress the viewers, flaunt their status, or simply to entertain. The collections were an accumulation of items from around the globe, in a time when the average person never strayed far from where they lived. The marvels in these collections ranged from the exotic to the bizarre. In fact, some collectors–wishing to make their displays more extraordinary–resorted to designing fake exhibits by sewing parts of different animals together to create creatures bordering on the macabre. Cabinet of Curious Mazes pays homage to these early collections of relics and treasures–using some of the author's own collections–while providing some equally curious full-color mazes to solve.