Ever since I read Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia 10 years ago, I have wanted my own Cabinet of Curiosities. The book opens with the lines: "In my grandmother's dining-room, there was a glass-fronted cabinet and in the cabinet a piece of skin . . . It was stuck to a card with a rusty pin. On the card was some writing in faded black ink, but I was too young then to read.
`What's that?'
`A piece of brontosaurus.' "
Much of In Patagonia is invented; Chatwin notoriously blurred the lines between fact and fiction, but it's still a wonderful book. When Chatwin went to Patagonia to track the story down, inspired by the mythical contents of his grandmother's cabinet, the "brontosaurus" turned out to be an unromantic Giant Sloth. But who cares? For Chatwin, the curiosity in the cabinet led to a quest, an adventure, a book and a lifetime's interest in the esoteric.
For years, I half-kept an eye out for a suitable cabinet in which to house my own curiosities, but I was always moving and travelling, and cabinets seen went unpurchased. They don't fit into rucksacks. Finally, this summer, I found one in a charity shop in Ranelagh and took it home triumphant.
I may not have a piece of brontosaurus skin, but the contents of my cabinet are uniquely magical to me; a kind of virtual reality world tour. Within is: a silver bullet found at the bottom of a hammam (a Turkish bath) in the Kackar mountains in Turkey; a piece of the Berlin Wall; a John Hinde tin tray of classic Irish scenes, including the famous one of the red-haired children with donkey; a miniature painting of a hunting scene on a cuff-link from Ishfahan's bazaar in Iran; an opal I found in Australia; glowin-the-dark bubble bath from New York; a matchbox from the Orient Express; a picture of the Virgin Mary from Lisbon with a halo and heart that flashes when you switch on the battery; a clockwork duck on a bike; a Victorian leather-bound inch-high edition of Tennyson's poems; a gold and mother-of-pearl pen belonging to the maternal grandmother I never knew; a china cup decorated with blue and silver birds from a market in Russia (no cabinet is complete without a cup); a tiny television viewfinder through which you look to see several classic horrific 1970s dinners; a sugar sachet from a Turkish bus that declares Pamukule Buses Take You To Your Lovers; and an enduring favourite, a leprechaun from Donegal that sings When Irish Eyes Are Smiling when you press its wee green hat.
A recent addition is something I found in Prague this Christmas. It's a babushka wooden doll, within which several other dolls nest. Dolls, indeed. The Big Doll is Bill Clinton, painted against a background of the US flag, and holding up a copy of Monica's Story. Open up Bill, and you find Monica, in big hair and a blue dress. Within Monica is Gennifer Flowers, then Paula Jones pops out next. The smallest doll of all is Hillary Clinton, but she too opens up - to reveal a Cuban cigar. I have put it next to Flashing Mary: the 21st century version of the classic Irish dyptych of the Pope and J.F. Kennedy.
The cabinet also contains scores of other marvels and wonders, every item with a long story attached to it. To some people, my Cabinet of Curiosities-cum-story juke-box might be so much kitsch junk, but to me, it's treasure. And let's face it, there's nothing like kitsch for dividing opinion. One of my dearest possessions (not in the Cabinet) is a pink furry bag with Barbie embroidered across in silver, and a little picture of the lady herself dangling from the handle.
This was bought in a toyshop in New York and I can honestly report that I have never seen its like anywhere else. People hardly ever know what to make of it. There is, of course, nothing to be made of it apart from the fact that it's a loud little bag of perfect size for a night out. What's fascinating is watching people struggle with pre-conceptions about what they do or do not expect from an adult woman.
As one who's long had an interest in this area, I'd venture that there are roughly three categories of kitsch. There is Organic Kitsch, which starts out as something innocuous, and over time, is promoted to kitsch icon status, such as shag carpets and lava lamps and hostess trolleys.
Then there is Instant Kitsch. These are things which were not intended to be kitsch but which are instantly received as such, such as the wedding-cake showboat creation that is the Stephen's Green Shopping Centre; the Tart with the Cart on College Street; and Mohamed Al Fayed's bizarre golden shrine to Dodi and Princess Diana in Harrods, which features an unwashed wine glass containing the dregs of the unfortunate couple's last drink in the Ritz.
And there is Embellished Kitsch, for which I have a particular weakness. These are things which are already a little odd and flashy, but which are transformed into something truly extraordinary by a bit of fertile imagination. Into this category would certainly fall the First Communion tiara spotted by an in-law of my sister's at a Dublin church. When the child had received Communion, she fiddled with a little switch on her tiara on the way back from the altar, thus illuminating the words Jesus Is In Me.
The leprechaun would also belong to the Embellished Kitsch category. Considering that there has never been a positive sighting of the little chap, he has been reinvented many times. You can find leprechauns with golf clubs, pints of Guinness, toadstools, pipes, cats, rainbows (but strangely, rarely sighted with pots of gold), and road signs pointing to everywhere from Dublin to Tir na nOg. Golf clubs! Just when did our national kitsch icon develop a golf handicap?
Perhaps the most valuable thing that kitsch does is to make us laugh. One look at my Cabinet of Curiosities, which pays considerable tribute to kitsch, and even seasoned viewers start to shriek with merriment. Treasure or junk? Who cares, if it makes people laugh, and entertains them with stories.
Meanwhile, I keep adding to the contents of the cabinet, collecting stories with every object. It's going to be my only heirloom and I hope it inspires my descendants to travel the world in search of adventures while looking for the places these little curiosities originated from.
rboland@irish-times.ie