Cornucopia - Discovering UK Collections

When it comes to the business of identifying where obscure collections (they call them 'the pre-eminent Designated Collections'), especially of things like scientific instruments, are to be found, no website can beat Cornucopia.

This amazing website is dedicated to knowledge, and it does one very simple thing, very well. It seeks out the specialist collections nationwide and allows you to interrogate them by Objects & Collections, by Museums, by People (artist, maker, donor) or by Places (worldwide). Say, for instance, you were interested to find out where there might be an orrery exhibited, Cornucopia will tell you. The earliest English orrery, it turns out, was made by Thomas Tompion and George Graham and is in the Oxford University Museum of the History of Science, while there is another exhibited in the Whipple Museum of the History of Science at the University of Cambridge.

SPECIAL FEATURES

The Picture Gallery offers thumbnail pictures, which can all be enlarged by clicking, from each of the Museums listed. It is intriguing to see what the various museums have chosen as landmark or definitive objects. The Ashmolean, for instance, selects its own facade (by Cockerell), the Alfred Jewel, part of a 14th century BC fresco depicting the daughters of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, and a drawing of an angel by Raphael.

This website is not illustrated nor does it even give website links to the museums or holdings identified, but it does tell you what is to be found where - an invaluable service.