• Title
  Entrance token from Sir Ashton Lever’s natural history museum `The Holophusicon', ca. 1775
• Creator
  Leverian Museum
• Call number
  R 2170
  
• Level of description
  fonds
• Date
  
  ca. 1775
• Type of material
  Coins
• Reference code
  1222976
• Issue Copy
  Digitised
• Physical Description
  1 token - bronze - diameter 37 mm
  
• ADMINISTRATIVE/ BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY
  
  The Holophusicon (meaning ‘embracing all of nature’) was a museum housing a natural history collection owned by Sir Ashton Lever. It opened at Leicester House, Leicester Square, London, in 1775 and was notable for the large number and variety of its exhibits and for its accessibility to the general public for a nominal admission fee, unusual for private collections at that time. The display included specimens and other items from the South Seas and Australia, many collected by Captain James Cook on his various voyages. Lacking commercial viability, the museum closed in 1786 and was sold, by lottery, to James Parkinson, who moved it to the purpose-built Rotunda Building at Blackfriars Bridge, renaming it the Leverian Museum. Again the museum was not commercially successful and in 1806 the collection was put up for auction, with the largest purchasers being British naturalist Edward Donavan and Austrian scientist Leopold von Fichtel, bidding on behalf of the Imperial Museum of Vienna. Other purchasers included the Earl of Derby and William Bullock.
  
  Reference:
  Holophusicon: The Leverian Museum: an eighteenth-century English institution of science, curiosity, and art / Adrienne L. Kaeppler. Honolulu : ZKF Publishers, 2011
• Scope and Content
  A circular bronze entrance token for the Holophusicon natural history museum in London, which opened in 1775. The front is stamped ‘Holophusicon’, while the reverse reads ‘Sr.A.L.’, the monogram of Sir Ashton Lever.
• Access Conditions
  
  Access via appointment
• Copying Conditions
  Out of copyright:
  Please acknowledge:: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
• General note
  
  Digital order no:Album ID : 1287055
• Subject
  Natural history museums--Great Britain.
  Tokens--Great Britain.
  Lever, Ashton, Sir, 1729-1788
  
• Open Rosetta viewer
  IE759935

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