Abstract
ABSTRACT This article draws on the concept of the ‘cabinet of curiosities’, Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne atlas, and Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project, to articulate a shared process of ‘distillation of affinities’ whereby disparate items, texts, images, and concepts are juxtaposed together to generate rich and unexpected meanings which do not inhere in the chosen items separately. It then proposes that such a process could be applied to the practice of historical biography, explores the implications of this, and presents a proof of concept in the form of a ‘life-cabinet’ of the Scottish antiquary and collector Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe (1781–1851). Sharpe was an eccentric by any standard and his ‘Hand of a Murderer, Preserved’, punning calling card (a C#), intimate sketches, and odd books offer a rich field for this essay.
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