Stipo (cabinet, known as Stipo Doria Tursi)

Between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a new piece of
furniture, the stipo (cabinet),
spread throughout Europe, ideal for preserving the small objects accumulated by
collectors (coins, medals, precious stones, naturalia and artificialia). Typical of those centuries was the Wunderkammer, a room of curiosities where scholars kept their
collections of bizarre and exotic objects, housed in cabinets. And this piece
of furniture, thanks to its many drawers of different sizes, was ideal for
conserving, storing and organising the entire collection by type and by
technique. Cabinets came in a great variety of shapes and sizes, but naturally
there was a preference for very unusual, fantastical designs. One
particular style were the architectural cabinets, that is, those reproducing
the façade of real or imaginary buildings. Here, our cabinet faithfully
reproduces the façade of the Palazzo Doria Tursi in Genoa, today the Town Hall.
The front, which can be opened, holds various drawers and secret spaces that
are also inserted in the lower plinth and behind the series of windows along
the two levels.