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The Kunstkammer of the Electors of Saxony, founded in Dresden around 1560, housed one of the richest collections of tools and scientific instruments in its day. A close analysis of the optical objects in the collection in the decades around 1600 is undertaken here—in particular, their arrangement by a mathematically trained curator, Lucas Brunn, and their use in an ‘experiment’ by a distinguished visitor, Johannes Kepler. It is argued that the selection, display and use of optical objects within this collection reflect a specific, playful image of optics promoted at the Saxon court. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article features mathematics teacher Johannes Kepler, who was born in December 1571 in the small town of Weil der Stadt in Germany. It says that the first appointment of Kepler was a mathematics teacher at the Protestant monastery school in Graz, Austria, after he graduated at the University of Tübingen. It adds that Kepler was also a prolific author of the three laws of planetary motion and has made significant contributions to optics.