This book is just as fascinating, macabre and illuminating as I expected it would be. Reporter Milgrom delves into the world of taxidermy. She visits a taxidermy lab for the Smithsonian, goes to the World Taxidermy Championships (twice), attends a guild meeting of taxidermists in the UK, tours behind the scenes at natural history museums and interviews staff there, meets “commercial” taxidermists who mount trophies for hunters, visits with a woman who taxidermies specimens for Damien Hirst’s modern art sculptures, travels to the three-day auction of a Victorian museum of “curiosities” collection (including the famous oddities preserved by Walter Potter in humanlike scenes with quirky humor – think kitten tea parties and baby rabbits at school desks), and observes the process of Ken Walker at work, who re-created the extinct Irish elk (a large deer species more closely related to modern fallow deer) patterned after fossils and depictions on cave paintings. Through all this she explores the history and artistry of taxidermy- how the skill developed (and is practiced today) so differently in the UK and the United States, how taxidermy had its heyday in the Victorian specimen collecting craze when natural history museums first became a thing, but such displays have now fallen out of favor. Reading about meticulous dioramas and incredibly detailed anatomically-correct pieces being dismantled for newer displays made me feel very very sad. Some are kept and preserved, others sold or simply taken apart and destroyed, if they’re in poor condition or there’s no room in storage for them.
In the end, the author herself attempts to stuff a squirrel, under the guidance of artisans in a taxidermy shop, and even enters her squirrel in a taxidermy competition under Novices, accepting the frank and exacting critique offered by a judge. I am really intrigued by the whole process, mostly because I used to love attending natural history museums to draw and sketch the specimens- so lifelike but they don’t move! I am in awe of people who would spend the hours of paintstaking work, research and knowledge about particular animal species to make them appear so lifelike. But I’m also rather squeamish, so doubt I could ever do that kind of thing myself. I found it really interesting to read interviews with Emily Mayer and other taxidermists, which makes it clear most of them have respect and admiration for the animals, would never kill an animal just to stuff it. (Their sources are varied. And yes, some of them are hunters and eat the birds, deer, etc) A lot of them had as kids a fascination with how things were made and articulated- wanted to disassemble stuff and put it back together- just with animals.
Borrowed from the public library.