The merchant, banker, diplomat, art collector, and dealer Philipp Hainhofer (1578–1647) well personifies the climate of the city of Augsburg in the early 1600s. Learned but of lesser nobility, like his father before him he initially made his name and financial resources in the silk trade; however, he soon extended his services to deal in luxurious and extravagant objects within a wide network of royalty and humanist scholars all across Europe. An art agent extraordinaire, he supplied his patrons with a variety of exotic goods and objets d’arts, not only naturalia, anthropological specimens, and spices, but also relics, tapestries, books, and paintings. He was well-positioned to do so. In the sixteenth century the city of Augsburg had gained significance as a center of luxury production, much due to the expanding and lucrative involvement in mining, banking, the textile industry, and colonial trade and exchange. This was in turn controlled by an oligarchy of a few extraordinarily wealthy dynasties. The combination of scholarly humanism, economic strength, and a direct access to the flow of marvelous objects resulted in rapidly expanding Kunstkammer collections in the city during this period.

Hainhofer's extensive trade in Kunstkammer objects and the formation of his own private Kunstkammer in 1604, sprung from this artisanal and mercantile milieu of the city and culminated in the 1610s with his production of Kunstschranke (art cabinets) for a princely market. Hainhofer engaged artists and artisans from a wide array of guilds to work on their fabrication.