What happens to trends after the cool-hunters have been and gone? Answer: they carry on. Lauren De’Ath explores why taxidermy will never truly die.
And so it came to be that all God’s creatures, great and small came back to life. Was it a miracle? Or, just a piece of well-positioned wire? For a time, taxidermy was la crème de la crème of the arts world; there it was, splashed like a cheap shot of Jordan all over the tabloids and broadsheets, in What’s Hot and Top Buy lists, alike. And that was just the tip of the iceberg.
Aside from numerous exhibitions held only in the chicest of London postcodes, it was not uncommon for stylist extraordinaire Katy Grand to use a few taxidermy hens and mice for shoots during her Pop! days and earlier this year esteemed photographer William Selden shot kangaroos and goats in preppy outfits for hipster magazine Vice. Meanwhile, king of creepy, magician Derren Brown it is rumoured keeps a pet taxidermy cat he affectionately refers to as Spasm on a living room shelf. Charmant!
Indeed, it was a great and ghoulish trend that worked its way through the cool pockets of Islington and East London faster than you could say, ”stitch’n’bitch” with sinister boutiques and nostalgic window displays boasting all kinds of wicked paraphernalia springing up weekly. And as we all know when the fashion crowds move in- you’re on to a surefire winner.
But trends are cruel. And as with all hyped merchandise, all that was glassy-eyed and stuffed was soon ditched and replaced with the impertinence of 90s fluro shades. To add insult to injury, taxidermy forever had the challenge of overcoming public doubt: “It is a little bit weird though isn’t it, y’know stuffing dead birds,” “bit dark.” Macabre. Sinister. Wrong. Strong words. These are the kind of folk who keep a deer carcass in the deep-freezer; forget the fish fingers and peas, so it really comes as no surprise then, that taxidermists are a fiercely secretive breed. They decline interview, shy behind work-sheds bedecked ceiling to floor with mounted stag heads and can ‘only type with one finger’, apparently. Yet despite all this and for a business that came to prominence during the late-Victorian era, amazingly there are more working taxidermists in the UK today than ever before. But who are these certified ‘oddballs’ and what do they want with our deceased moggies and pooches?
“Well, I quite like a good vole.” Enter Dave Hornbrook, at the moment he is busy mulling over which long-dead specimen to pluck from his freezer for the annual taxidermy championships held in the States. As the sole British representative and reigning champ, he is feeling the pressure (although he’d never let on). A straight-talking Yorkshireman through and through, his own dramatic tale of his foray into the industry, reads like a Barry Hines novel. From humble beginnings as a bored childhood hobby ‘tinkering’ with dead specimens on the moors, to a horrific car crash leaving him fighting for his life some two years ago that made him finally realise his lifelong dream. He even taught himself the well-honed craft by borrowing books from his local library, of all things. To date, he is most proud of his running hare- a mounted piece that won him third place in his first competition. A celebratory shot of which is the homepage on his website.
Like all things, it hasn’t taken long for the taxi’ trend to do its rounds; he now runs classes, in his isolated North Yorkshire town to train up a new generation of skilled zoologists that will do the industry justice. Although he is says his new protégés are hardly exemplary: “There’s more to it than people think. They often scarper once they realise how hard it really is.” The trick to a good piece of taxidermy all lies a finicky process of removing the skin of the animal whilst it’s still fresh, defatting, degreasing, fitting the model around the skin, sewing, modelling some more and then leaving the animal to dry for a week. Not for the faint-hearted, but not as perturbed a process as the public assume. “It’s not gruesome at all! But you have to be very dedicated; even now after I finish a piece, I take a step back and think, ‘Hmm, what could I do better for next time.’ I get a lot of young ladies who want to learn for some reason,” he muses, although he is utterly nonplussed as to why. “I guess they come for the nature side of it. It’s like all things that come around,” he says in his slow Yorkshire brogue. “Fashions, I suppose.”
Back in London, hidden in a not so conspicuous spot on Hackney’s Mare Street lies London’s finest purveyor of all things weird with a self-confessedly ‘disparate collection of objects’. Set up way back in 1878 by America philosopher William James, Viktor Wynd’s Last Tuesday Society stands as East London’s original gateway to ghoulish; Facebook is awash with Blackberry snaps of winged taxidermy cats apparently ‘flying’ on the ceiling and a £3000 eight foot polar bear surrounded by a harem of equally rigor-mortified characters. It is a store where seeing is indeed believing.
Ever-eloquent spokeswoman Suzette Field speaks on behalf of mysterious silent founder Viktor Wynd: “We opened up the London branch of the society in order to continue to build upon Last Tuesday’s ethos of furthering the artistic, literary and esoteric aspects of urban life,“ she says. Already an avid collector, Field jumped on the bandwagon after compadre Wynd ‘surprised’ her with an articulated skeleton of a tiny shih tzu; years later her collection is so large she uses the shop as a museum for her reams of odd bits and bods. As an art, graphic and interior designer, she has the perfect summary for why she believes taxidermy is so eternally loved: “It’s an escape! Really it is exploring all of these things within the confines of somewhere like Hackney that makes it so popular.”
Meanwhile, things are a little more grounded elsewhere. Talking about his upcoming taxidermy show in the States, Hornbrook is comparing the austere trade rules over there in comparison to the UK, “There’s this inspection at customs, see. There are some strict rules in America about what you can and can’t bring into the country- no road-kill. No kestrels and no brown owls- not even a feather can enter the country. Else, your work is taken away and incinerated. I don’t know why.” Rife with all manner of delicious opinions, he laments in about a Britain ‘overrun with cowboy taxidermists, who just don’t do things properly.’ The fear for those like Hornbrook is that it is these nonchalant vagabonds who continue to give the industry a bad name.
Stemming from the 1800s, it was a service that went to bridge an ever-expanding Empire with her people by opening up new zoological gems previously unseen by the public. But for every person awed, was another stymied- when the first platypus arrived in Britain, for example, some experts refused to accept it was a genuine species, convinced a backstreet taxidermist has sewn a duck’s beak on a beaver’s body- for with interest came the backstreet peddlers . A black market of shoddy creations shook the country, but for the virtuoso Victorians, avid collectors of anything bizarre and bewitching; a mummified hand or stuffed creature from foreign lands was a must-have above every Victorian fireplace. One fraud even passed off a variety of exotic birds native to Africa and Asia as having been hunted from his own back yard in quiet seaside town, Leonard-on-Sea. It only came to light nearly a hundred years later that he was indeed the faker, he was, but it is an uneasy mistrust that is maintained until this day.
Over the years the widespread curiosity has been replaced by suspicion and rumours of taxidermists acting like savage butchers continues to plague the profession. Meanwhile with some 30,000 working taxidermists in the US compared to just 2000 here, reports suggest a less than satisfactory culling of wild animals to satiate an obsession with trophy murders to hang from a drawing-room wall. And we can all imagine Ace Ventura’s face at such a spectacle. “Times are a-changing,” muses Dave, “You’ve got women buying chickens from the supermarket, not knowing what to do with it. People aren’t what they used to be fifty years ago.”
It is something that divides opinion in an age of ‘Fur is Murder’ PETA campaigns and political correctness. You may recall the 2009 Bodyworks exhibition by scientist Gunther von Hagens that came under some serious fire for displaying a naked corpse couple having sex and thus ‘combining the two biggest taboos left in the 21st century- sex and death.’ Artisans and partisans alike continually defend the priming of the dead as an opportunity to be close to something for further study, however intentions are sometimes assuaged for propriety.
“But, it’s the same process as preparing your chicken for your Sunday roast!” argues Katie Brookes. At twenty-four, she is stands as something of a ‘dermy newbie but whereas Hornbrook’s occupational decision was a road less taken, hers was a more standard approach. At first glance, Katie is just the taxidermy “type”, you might think. With the kind of clear-faced good looks and seemingly naturally windswept hair you’d expect of a London cool kid. Hers however is an interest that began with a certain stuffed vulture in a GCSE art class, for whilst the rest of her colleagues were no doubt raving about the latest Maccabees record, Katie was feverishly collecting roadkill and creating amateur taxidermy pieces nerdishly in her bedroom.
Having been schooled on the continent, on her arrival in London she immediately requested an internship with Polly Morgan in London (before she was famous, we might add) and set to work perfecting her craft. On her offbeat hobby, she comments: “I had been experimenting with preserving dead animals purely for drawing purposes, so it seemed like a natural progression from the unsuccessful resin casting of dead mice and birds I had been doing before. It's really great when you have started to mount the animal and you see the life it has lived: scrapes on its feet or small scars on its beak or a chunk out of its feathers or some fur that has been scarred. Its whole life becomes very apparent before your very eyes.”
It could be assumed, her creations take the place of a sort of pet, but it is just a passion for art and animals taken to new levels of admiration, no different from a taking a photograph of a loved one, or as Katie puts it ‘keeping a pair of leather shoes’. “I love the idea of an animal or bird lasting forever,” she rhapsodises. “The beautiful face, the feathers, the fur not being lost to the ground or thrown in the bin but celebrating the animal. I think I get more defensive than people in negative reactions to the work as I feel the practice is moral and is natural and enjoyable when you see a really gorgeous animal looking almost alive that will last for a long time.”
Likewise, Suzette Field is just as defensive of anti-taxidermy ignorance, claiming it is all down to public fear of the unknown, “ In our case, our shop is more of a collection that appeals to our sensibilities, from joke shop items to butterflies, from desk masks to two-headed teddy bears. If other people label them grotesque that is because they don’t share our eclectic outlook. In any case much of our stuff, for instance the taxidermy is totally natural; it’s nature preserved. As a vegetarian, I’m more disgusted by a slab of steak.”
But sadly, despite its imminent and eternal beauty, taxidermy is no longer the popular feature it once was; considered too garish for the average English household. Instead, we buy plastic tabletops from Ikea. However, we can still see the true craftsmanship in action, in the stuffed animals behind the glass at the Natural History Musuem and the likes; it allows us to get right up close to a lion, look a grizzly in the eye and see for the first time just what a dodo really does look like. Meanwhile, Dave Hornbrook offers us some exclusive top-notch advice for budding collectors; apparently, though sold cheaply for their Victorian gaudiness, taxidermy pieces in a glass case are worth thousands of pounds these days; so get busy scouting Spitalfields market, folks.
But money, science and nostalgia aside, what’s the honest reason why taxidermy is still so admired today? “Really?” concludes Suzette Field, knowingly, “It is because naturalia and zoology reminds us how nature is really the finest artist of them all.”
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