Louis Vuitton heir’s time capsule of weirdness explored in new book that catalogues fashion icon’s bizarre collection of objets

When Gaston-Louis Vuitton died, the contents of his office were packed up, stored away, and eventually forgotten.

Vuitton (1883-1970), the grandchild of the luxury trunk maker Louis Vuitton, ran the eponymous company for more than 50 years and was “the aesthete of the family”, says Patrick Mauriès, a French writer and historian. Over time, as the head of a company that made suitcases, he amassed “a bizarre assemblage of objects related to travel, which he kept in his home and his office,” Mauriès, said. “It was sort of a mess – it was stacked by the door, around his desk, and so on.”

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The collection included board games (Jeu de Paris, a French version of Snakes and Ladders), 19th century carpet bags, and more than 800 tsubas, a Japanese sword guard that is often composed of an ornate piece of metal that delineates the sword’s edge and its handle.

Because his heirs chose to store it away rather than sift through it, the collection – left untouched for decades – became a sort of time capsule from one of the company’s most vital, creative periods. Now, the company, which at this point is owned by a luxury goods conglomerate controlled by Bernard Arnault, has “rediscovered” Gaston Vuitton’s collection and catalogued all in a new book, Cabinet of Wonders: The Gaston-Louis Vuitton Collection, edited by Mauriès. (The book will be available for purchase on September 17)

The reasons, at least from the company’s perspective, for publishing it are straightforward: The collection harks back to the days when Louis Vuitton connoted creativity, not airport kiosks. “I think they’re trying to show every aspect of the Louis Vuitton history,” Mauriès said. “So with this, they’re now trying to show something that’s less well known, let’s call it the company’s aesthetic aspect.”

For those less interested in a luxury chain’s brand identity, the book still has value. Page after page of Gaston’s collection – much of which is of negligible monetary value – reveals a cross-section of the aesthetic and material concerns of a highly cultured European, the likes of which are rarely seen in such comprehensive, unsparing detail.

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