November 2008
The Archives
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11.21.08Picturing the Museum
First Aid, Taxidermy (0)Mounting a Timber Wolf skeleton. American Museum of Natural History. Photographs by Robert E. Logan. High art in the taxidermy world, the American Museum of Natural History has a remarkable, rich collection of photographs documenting the process of creating the museum's wonderful visual displays of natural science. I've been slowly poring over these photos tonight, musing about an alternate life as a science exhibit muralist or designer. I would wear a long white lab coat and have accidental paint under my nails, but I'd be carefully ironic with well-groomed eyebrows and full-on makeup. Whether I'd simultaneously have a posse of boys ...
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11.19.08Appreciating Animal Skins
Skinning, Taxidermy (0)Until I met Grandpa Frank, I never thought much about animal hides or stuffed specimens. My only references were fur coats and dusty dioramas in museums. Frank has an eye for beauty, rustic and otherwise. Over a lifetime Frank has preserved many natural specimens. Lucky for us we get to share his bounty, and touch animals that we would never get near in the wild. How often do you get close to a skunk? Well, probably never right? Frank has a whole collection of skunk skins (apparently his sweetheart Grandma Jan has a pension for them). Most of these skunks were ...
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11.18.08Taxidermy, Oh My Heck
Skinning, Taxidermy (1)The principal gallery at Deyrolle, the famed Parisian taxidermy shop, as it looked before the fire in 2008. Photo by Marc Dantan, Vanity Fair Magazine. I've been both daunted and excited about this chapter. Taxidermy isn't an easy hobby to pick up nowadays, and for all the straightforward finesse Beard goes through to explain the process to us in his book, I'm absolutely intimidated to paralysis. It's one of those projects you just know you're going to fail on the first try, hard as you manage. George Adams mounting "Raffles", the talking crow, by Alex J Rota. Image courtesy of The American ...
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