If the world could be contained in a single room, it was because no natural object was devoid of significance, but rather everything was a manifestation of a plan or a latent meaning. Everything, concluded the rhetorician Emanuele Tesauro, was a metaphor, ‘and if nature speaks to us through these metaphors, it follows that an encyclopaedic collection, as the sum of all possible metaphors, must logically become the all-encompassing metaphor for the world.’

Mauries, Patrick. Cabinets of Curiosities. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2002.