Performance artist Nate Hill, hit the headlines recently with his A.D.A.M and E.V.E pieces - two human forms assembled from hundreds of parts of dead animals found alongside roads and discarded as waste. Working with a group of self-proclaimed "rogue taxidermists", Hill and others aim to recreate the curiosities and non-existent animals so beloved during the 19th century.
To the established taxidermist, the grotesqueries of some of the Victorians has nothing to do with modern taxidermy. "The only way a good taxidermist can work is to have a great love and respect for the beauty of the world's creatures," says Mike Gadd of The UK Guild of Taxidermists. Like many of his ilk, Gadd came into the work through an "interest in wildlife and a wish to stop a dead item decaying".
Taxidermy History
Taxidermy - from the Greek "taxis" (arrangement) and "derma" (skin) - was "referred to as early as 1248 in the treatise on falconry of Emperor Friedrich II of Hohenstaufen", writes Karl Schulze-Hagen in "Avian taxidermy in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance" (Journal of Ornithology (Vol 144, No. 4, October 2003). It quickly gained popularity as a way to promote understanding of the animal kingdom. "The oldest scientific instructions on taxidermy were set down by Belon in 1555," says Schulze-Hagen. "Olina in 1622 and Aitinger in 1626/31 provide the first detailed guides to taxidermic procedures."
By the 19th Century it had become massively popular with every town having a taxidermist or two. Charles Darwin was a taxidermist and even the twenty-sixth persident of the US, Theodore Roosevelt, "learned taxidermy as a child" says John Gable in The many-sided Theodore Roosevelt: American Renaissance Man (Roosevelt Study Center, 1986).
Not content with shooting animals and then preserving them naturistically, some Victorians, such as the then-famous Walter Potter, were unable to resist humanising them. Potter's anthropomorphic works include eighteen English toads in a park, playing on swings and seesaws ("Athletic Toads"), thirty-seven ginger kittens enjoying tea and mouse tarts at a garden party ("Kittens' Tea & Croquet Party") and eighteen European Red Squirrels at ease in a private club ("The Upper Ten" or "Squirrel's Club").
Modern Taxidermy
Given today's more sensitive tastes, it's hardly surprising that many view taxidermy with suspicion. The craft reached "a very low ebb in the public esteem, c 1950 -1990," says Jeremy Adams of Brighton's Booth Museum of Natural History. "I suspect that there will always be an element of society that regards taxidermy as barbaric."
"Most do not understand," explains Gadd, who is still surprised at the number of his customers who think that he kills the animals himself. Ironically enough, most of his supply is actually "killed by the great British public in their cars".
It has been prohibited for anyone (including taxidermists) to handle most non-game animals killed for sport since 1947. The Guild suggests: "Should you come across a protected dead wild creature (this means everything except game birds shot in season and certain pest species) and wish to have it preserved, you must consider how the subject met its death. Once you are satisfied that the cause of death was not illegal, make a note of all circumstances surrounding the death then contact your taxidermist. If you are unable to ascertain the cause, the information you do have can help your taxidermist to decide if your specimen can be mounted."
With the modern taxidermist more likely to donate to the WWF than venture out with a canoe-mounted elephant gun in the manner of Edward Booth (Booth Museum, Brighton), it would seem that the UK's 3000 practitioners are tentatively redefining their craft as one concerned with celebration of life rather than death.
Justin Schamotta - Justin was born in South Africa, raised in the Welsh Valleys and now resides in Brighton. He has been co-editor of Bulb magazine, deputy ...
