NEW YORK, NY.- Bonhams announced the June 4 auction The Cabinet of Natural Curiosities. Popular during the Renaissance, cabinets of curiosity, also known as Kunstkammer ("art-room") or Wunderkammer ("wonder-room"), were the personal and often idiosyncratic collections of the individual with the main function being to provoke a sense of curiosity and wonder in the viewer.

Tom Lindgren, Bonhams Natural History Co-Consulting Director, states about the sale, “This is the first time Bonhams has presented an auction of this kind. Natural curiosities such as fossils, meteorites, petrified wood and mineral specimens are now collected not only for their scientific interest but also for their stunning decorative qualities. They represent contemporary equivalents to the contents of the Victorian library, providing prestige to the contemporary home or office."

Fossil highlights include an historic marine reptile (Ichthyosaurus communis) of the Jurassic discovered in the 1930’s, from an English public school collection (pre-sale est. $50,000 – 60,000.) Complete and without restoration, its dolphin-like bodyline and beautiful articulation were enhanced by re-preparation by a former chief preparator from the British Natural History Museum. The specimen is 195 million years old.

A petrified wood slab, suitable for use as a tabletop, is estimated to sell for $50,000-60,000. Measuring 90 x 64 inches, it displays the brilliant swirling red colors for which the finest specimens from the Chinle Formation of Arizona is known. A separate lot in the sale offers a table base which may be used with this petrified wood lot.

A magnificent 51-milion-year-old fossil palm frond, found embedded in limestone matrix of unusual rust-apricot coloration, is estimated at $40,000 – 50,000. Framed in exotic wenge wood and fitted with a cleat, it can easily be displayed on a wall of standard construction. From the famed Green River Formation in Wyoming, palm fronds are considered rare finds. A rare predatory fish (Amia) from the same geologic formation, accompanied by several other fish species, is offered as a wall mural framed in wenge wood and fitted for wall display. Superb in its quality and preparation, its estimate is $15,000 – 20,000.

Particularly novel items include a crescent knife blade with a fossil fish inclusion (pre-sale est. $30,000 – 40,000), an historic piece of glass from an observation window in the facility that produced the atomic bomb which was dropped on Nagasaki (pre-sale est. $10,000 – 12,500) and an agate specimen shaped like a child’s foot (pre-sale est. $1,000 – 1,250).

A dramatic fossilized “sea lily,” a marine Jurassic animal which looks like a plant with a long stem and large flower, from the famous shales of Holzmaden, Germany, is offered at a pre-sale estimate of $18,000 – 24,000. It is naturally embedded in richly colored gray-black shale; the fossil glimmers with the subtle mineral replacement of pyrite. Also, an exceptional fossilized woolly mammoth tusk, displaying covetable blue-green coloration, is offered at a pre-sale estimate of $8,000 – 10,000. Displaying a graceful curve, its rich colors were produced by burial in the permafrost in which it lay entombed since the last Ice Age.

Dinosauria lots include a spectacular Triceratops brow horn (estimate: $15,000-20,000) which represents a feature most definitive of the famous dinosaur genus. Other lots include a mounted Psittacosaurus skeleton (a ceratopsian related to Triceratops) (pre-sale est. $12,000-15000) and a Triceratops horn (pre-sale est. $2,500-3,500).

A highly varied selection of over 25 meteorites will also be offered with estimates ranging from under $1,000 to $13,000.

More than ten lots of amber and copal – fossilized tree resin from prehistoric rainforests - will be offered; estimates range from $500 – 2,500. Many of these specimens feature fascinating insect inclusions such as an assassin bug, mammal hair, a tadpole and an ant wrapped in spider web.