Gaston-Louis Vuitton, grandson of Louis Vuitton (the one who founded one of the world’s most legendary luxury brands) was of a cultured type. Before his death in 1970 he had led the company for over 50 years, and throughout that time his insatiable curiosity and appetite for travel led him to collect vintage trunks, locks, hand tools, perfume bottles, tribal masks, walking sticks, vintage travel toys, travel articles, hotel labels, printed monograms and other typographical rarities — all of which he liked to call curiosité industrielles, or curiosities of the trade.
[bctt tweet=”I’m never bored, I almost always have something to keep me busy, whatever the latitude, longitude and position of the needle on the altimeter. — Gaston-Louis Vuitton” username=”arthurious”]
The collection was kept secret for decades, until recently, when French historian Patrick Mauriès, together with the Vuitton family curated and edited the selection to turn it into a book. Cabinet of Wonders: The Gaston-Louis Vuitton Collection hit shelves late 2017 and is now available in bookstores. Sharing a similar voracious curiosity about peculiar objects and travel finds, I couldn’t resist the temptation to add the book to my library.
Cabinet of Wonders: The Gaston-Louis Vuitton Collection
Edited by Patrick Mauriès
Hardcover, 308 pages
Features 350+ illustrations in color and black and white
Size: 10.1 in x 13.4 in x 1.7 in
Published by Thames & Hudson➾ Buy on Amazon ($50)
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