Still Lives: The beauty and tragedy of Victorian Taxidermy.

Without a doubt, the most glorious disaster in the history of Wunderkammer window displays was the week that Igor and I decided to show ‘Miss Trixie’, the taxidermied sheltie sheepdog.
In past windows we had shown pheasants, snakes, turtles, bats- all with varying responses from grimaces to delighted oohs and aahs. Miss Trixie however was different.
I think the only way we could have offended the delicate sensibilities of Carltons pedestrians more would be if we had done a ‘Hilter’ window.
After hearing for perhaps the twentieth time “ Oh, my God- who could do that to a DOG!” and in anticipation of a brick through the window we waved the white flag and retired Trixie to a cosy nook out back.
‘The Trixie Affair’, as it shall always be remembered, raises some interesting questions about our relationships with animals: the different values we give them based on arbitary notions of beauty and likeability (I wonder how many people would say “ Oh my God, who could do that to a SHARK!), the breach between percieved notions of cruelty and reality (pigs are as intellegent as dogs, but we eat them) and in relation to taxidermy- not only the moral but the aesthetic issues. I am not going to pretend to have an answer to any of these questions, but I do want to shed a little light on the history of taxidermy and see if we can see in the shadows cast some sense of what it means today.

The great hey-day of taxidermy was in the Victorian period. Untill that time, taxidermy as we know it was none ant. Putrefaction, degredation by insects and the very un-lifelike effects of literal ‘stuffing’ were all insurmountalbe dis-incentives. It was not until the experiments in the early1800’s of Dufresne, a French preparator at the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, that the art of taxidermy was born.
The reasoning behind Dufresnes method was simple: If the animal to be stuffed presented to the eye mainly its skin and attendant fur or feathers, then why preserve the whole? Why bother with the messy inards when they could be removed and replaced? Dufresnes method involved skinning the animal completely and then stretching the skin over what is essentially a sculpture of the creatures form. The idea was revolutionary and evidently very effective. Captian Thomas Brown, author of ‘The Taxidermists Manual’
(Fullarton & Co. 1833) wrote of Dufresne’s collection:

I found the collection to consist of many rare and valuable specimens, and,
as a whole, in a high state of preservation, as might be expected, from the
ability of its distinguished possessor

Captain Brown saw at once the advantage of an association with Dufresne and availed himself of the French preparators methods to bring them home to England
When his own treatise on taxidermy was published it coincided with one of the most fascinating and paradoxical movements of history. In sharp juxtaposition with the clanking and churning of Englands industrial revolution was a new obsession: nature.
No other society has had such a smothering love as the Victorians had for the natural world. Everywhere was evidence of their fascination with the wild and exotic and their desire to control it: from the great zoos that were opening around the country to the conservatories that housed their rainforest plants.
Perhaps the ultimate realisation of that controlling love for nature was in the art of taxidermy. Here a wild and beautiful creature could truly be possesed- it could become an object: wild but touchable, beautiful and captured.
In 1862 Ashmead and Co. won the prize medal at an exposition for a taxidermied case of birds. The birds were preserved as ‘in flight’with a scene from their natural habitat painted in the background and delicate tufts of real plants in the fore. It was the first time that the public had seen such a subtle and life-like preservation and a booming business for Ashmead immediately followed. By 1880 almost every English town had its own taxidermist and business wasn’t slowing down. The demand for more and more exotic and novel cases increased. In 1912 just before the craze finally peaked and died, a British firm received 28,300 Bird of Paradise skins for taxidermy cases and ladies hats.
Despite (or perhaps because of) the popularity of the taxidermy trend the variables in quality were enormous. Many Victorian cases seen today are filled with awkward looking birds perched on makeshift rails, or with clumsily painted vingnettes of a few blobby trees in the background. Still, a few firms and individuals did stand out from the crowd with the quality or novelty of their work.
Spicer and Sons of England are notable for their exceptionally beautiful and subtle cases.
Well known also, was the work of Walter Potter- an amateur, if such as thing within the world of taxidermy existed, but of extraordinary talent and imagination.
His whimsical and bizarre dioramas of anthrompomorphised creatures have only gained in repuatation over the years. Notable is his “ Death of Cock Robin” a funeral parade of over twenty birds, all shedding glass tears.

3. Magnificent Ring-Necked Pheasant in Cedar and Glass Case Circa 1890-1900