Collection Mania!

Don Saltero's Coffee House

Displays of Curiosities became all the rage. In Chelsea the Bun House was covered with objects. Don Saltero's Coffee-house was desribed by Richard Steele in the Tatler in 1709:

'Here the Literati sit in council' the eye 'was diverted by Ten Thousand Gimcracks round the Room and on the Sieling....

On display were:

• 'nun's stockings'
• petrified mushrooms
• the spider from Tarentum in Italy the bite whereof occassions madness and death and is curable only by music
• manna from Canaan, it drops from the clouds twice in a year in May and June, one day each month
• Pontius Pilate's Wife's Chambermaid's Sister's hat

Even Chelsea's famous Bunhouse was festooneed with antiquities and curiosities.