Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy
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- ISBN13: 9780618405473
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
It’s simple to dismiss taxidermy as a kitschy or sinister sideline, the realm of trophy fish and jackalopes or an anachronistic throwback to the dusty diorama. Yet theirs is a world of intrepid hunter-explorers, eccentric naturalists, and gifted museum artisans, all devoted to the contradictory pursuit of making the illusion of life.
Into this subculture of insanely passionate animal lovers ventures journalist Melissa Milgrom, whose journey stretches from the anachronistic family tree workshop of the last chief taxidermist for the American Museum of Natural History to the studio where an English sculptor, granddaughter of a surrealist artist, preserves the animals for Damien Hirst’s most disturbing artworks. She wanders through Mr. Potter’s Museum of Curiosities in the final days of its being to watch dealers vie for preserved Victorian oddities, and visits the Smithsonian’s offsite lab, where taxidermists transform zoo skins into vivacious beasts. She tags along with a Canadian bear trapper and ex- Roy Orbison impersonator–the three-time World Taxidermy Champion–as he resurrects an extinct Irish elk using DNA studies and Paleolithic cave art for reference; she even ultimately picks up a penknife and stuffs her own stasher. Transformed from a curious onlooker to an empathetic participant, Milgrom takes us deep into the world of taxidermy and reveals its mysterious appeal.
Amazon Best Books of the Month, March 2010: For many, taxidermy summons images of wildlife frozen in menacing poses, teeth bared in an eternal rictus; or maybe it’s the lamented family tree cat, forever curled in purr-less slumber. With Still Life, Melissa Milgrom peels the skin back on Norman Bates’s favorite pastime, dutifully tracking taxidermy from its 19th-century heyday (the beneficiary of a natural history boom), to its nadir as a reviled predilection in the age of PETA and conservation. It will tell most readers as much as they need to know about erosion-molded rats and replacement lips, ears, and eyelids, but it’s the culture of iron-stomached men (and occasionally, women) that practice the art of skinned carcasses and stretched hides–persons who wield “the calipers and the brain spoons”–that Milgrom’s after. Beginning as a wide-eyed visitor to a third-generation stuff shop, she moves through an underworld of auctions, artisans, scientists, and the ultra competitive (albeit insular) World Taxidermy Championships, ultimately trying a queasy hand at stasher-stuffing herself. Still Life an entertaining and illuminating adventure. –Jon Foro
Amazon Exclusive: A Letter from Melissa Milgrom, Leader of Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy
Dear Amazon Reader,
People–even my own parents!–question what sparked my interest in taxidermy. I tell them that in 1994 I went on a safari gone awry, which led me to the family tree workshop of the last chief taxidermist of the American Museum of Natural History. I was expecting him to be creepy like Norman Bates in Psycho, but he was a gentle naturalist, and his studio with its skeletons and birds, the beauty and the weird tools, evoked Darwin’s study. The contradiction pulled me in, and still does.
Still Life took more than six years to write and that’s because I had to shift my perception from one of skepticism to one of empathy and respect. I just saw Fantastic Mr. Fox and thought if Wes Anderson had been alive in the 1850s he’d have been a Victorian taxidermist, building small scenes of kittens dressed as brides. It’s ironic–Victorians needed taxidermy to see exotic species from additional continents, and we need taxidermists for the same reason–we long for animals as they disappear. Taxidermy evokes grandeur, which may help us comprehend the present mass extinction.
Another reason I find taxidermy engrossing is because it combines art, science, and hunting. In Still Life I shadowed the most gifted taxidermist I could find in each area: an artist, a meadow naturalist, and a hunter, each of whom is on a quest to know scenery on its own terms. English sculptor Emily Mayer preserves animals for Damien Hirst’s most provocative artworks; her dogs are so boggling you have to poke them to see if they will go. Ken Walker, the hunter from Alberta who recreates extinct species, is self-taught. He won the World Taxidermy Championships three times and was a Roy Orbison impersonator, which really makes perfect sense. Taxidermy is like karaoke. The person who likes the singer the most gets the voice right.
I hope you will delight in the people you meet in Still Life whose obsessions and uncannily lifelike replicas make an art form that once was sublime and may be again.
Melissa Milgrom
(Photo © Ulalume Zavala)
A Look Inside the World Taxidermy Championships with Leader Melissa Milgrom
(Click to Enlarge)
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| Ken Walker’s Panda “Thing Thing”–recreated from bear skins– Best of Show Recreations 2003 |
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This review is specifically for fans of Damien Hirst who may have heard about this book since it has a chapter on Hirst: Still Life offers glimpses into the world of taxidermy and of the people that make, curate, and collect it. The book covers many different aspects of the taxidermy world but my personal favorites were the chapters on Mr. Potter’s Museum of Curiosities which was one of the most legendary, private museums of taxidermy before the contents were eventually sold off at auction. That chapter leads directly into my additional favorite chapter which related taxidermy to the art of Damien Hirst. If you’re a Hirst fan or art lover it’s a brief but appealing read and recommended.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
As a collector of mounted (not “stuffed”) animals for ten years now, and a ex- resident of the UK, and a ex- Museum of Natural History member, I’ve permanently been oddly drawn to depictions of live animals using the remnants of dead ones. And since I am not a hunter, it is oddly hard to clarify this interest to people who do not share it. This book, but, makes an attempt to do just that, and does an admirable job of accomplishing that goal. The “adventures” that Ms. Milgrom relates span decades, centuries even, and take in the globe, from New Jersey to Fantastic Britain, Egypt, Africa, Canada, you name it. She meets legendary and not-so-legendary taxidermists, even some legendary artists like Damian Hirst. She attends auctions and shows, and relates her own experience of mounting a domestic stasher, taking second place in the Novice category of a taxidermy show. This book is just a clean, well narrated, painstakingly researched window on a world that not many have the inclination to explore, much less know. Hopefully, this book will gain some measure of notoriety and broaden many people’s view of taxidermy, as it really does provide a unique perspective on the natural world that is all around us. This book is fascinating and I recommend it to hobbyists, taxidermists, readers looking for something different, and any member of any natural history museum, National Geographic and the like. This book will not disappoint you.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
I’ve permanently loved wandering the halls of museums. When I was younger, I spent hours staring at the dioramas in the American Museum of Natural History’s Ackley Hall of African Mammals. While I prefer to see animals in the wild and certainly don’t condone the slaughter of any animals for museums, sometimes these older museum mounts are the only way I’ll ever get to see the more elusive and rare animals, such as tigers or aardvarks. I’ve permanently wondering a bit about these exhibits. Who made them? How realistic were they? Why don’t more museums have dioramas as wonderful as persons in the Ackley Hall?
Fortunately, I selected up Melissa Milgrom’s Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy soon after visiting the Smithsonian Hall of Mammals, where I saw, among additional things, a gorgeous panther and an extremely rare Tasmanian wolf. Reading Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy is like peering behind persons dioramas to see what the meadow of taxidermy is really like.
Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy focuses on taxidermy as a meadow, rather than taxidermy procedures (although Milgrom walks the reader through the process when she tries to mount a stasher). Milgrom profiles some of the leading personages in taxidermy, both historic and modern. The result is an amusing and fascinating look into different group of naturalists – the redneck, gun-toting, politically conservative scenery lovers. Milgrom succeeds in bringing the rather eccentric personalities of taxidermy to life. These range from the lovable David and Bruce Schwendeman, who have an ancient-school taxidermy shop in New Jersey; the confident Ken Walker, champion of the World Taxidermy Championships in the category of fake recreations; and Emily Mayer, the self-described “Chairbitch” and practiced in erosion taxidermy. These aren’t your WWF environmentalists, but they demonstrate a passion for wildlife that would match any green crusader.
Generally, Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy makes for an fascinating, if quick read. Going to the Smithsonian regularly, I particularly loved the account of the Smithsonian’s preparation for the Kenneth E. Behring Family tree Hall of Mammals. Milgrom captures the sense that one gets when entering the room, both the excellent (dramatic African animal mounts) and the terrible (the “welcome to your family tree” message is rather cheesy). I sympathized with Ackley and his perfectionism, dying in the forests of the Congo. But, some parts of the book weren’t as appealing – for example, I can’t know how anyone could consider Damien Hirst’s dead cows either art or taxidermy. The Potter’s art collection was cute and quaint, but seemed out of place alongside the Smithsonian museum and the adventures of naturalists.
I also wish the book had more photos. It is really hard to appreciate some of the taxidermy pieces Milgrom describes lacking seeing excellent pictures. I establish myself searching the internet many times to try to see Potter’s full “Funeral of Cock Robin” diorama. I never did find a excellent picture of Ken Walker’s Irish Elk. And, of course, if you’ve never been to the AMNH or Smithsonian halls of mammals, then you might find yourself wondering about Milgrom’s excitement.
Ultimately, Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy isn’t the type of book that will get readers excited about taxidermy if they had no previous interest. In fact, Milgrom herself adopts a decidedly agnostic view toward the actual work of taxidermy. If you are disgusted by taxidermy or cannot overcome your moral outrage at the thought of stuffing dead animals, you might not want to bother with this book. But, if, like me, you’ve establish yourself staring at museum pieces in awe or marveled at the details of Potter’s anthropomorphic kittens, then Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy will provide you with a rare glimpse into this world.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
In the interest of full disclosure, I got a copy of this book sight unseen, in order to review it for Amazon’s Vine Program. Had I been at a bookstore and able to flip through it first, I can say with relative certainty that this review would be different — as in, it wouldn’t exist.
From the description, I thought this would be tales about and an examination of the art of taxidermy, which is kind of fascinating and kind of creepy, all wrapped in one. And honestly, it *is*. The book starts with how the leader got involved with a semi-local taxidermist and learned about the trade.
From there, though, the leader lost me. Not every book will be written in a style you connect with, I know, but I had a *really* hard time reading this one. It reads a small like journalistic writing, but I had real distress connecting with the information in the way it was open. At times, it was so dry that I’d place it down and walk away for several weeks, and finally, I place it down and didn’t come back.
I do want to make it clear that this is just a case of me, personally, not being able to get through it — a name more interested in the theme matter or with a longer attention span might find it fascinating. There’s a lot of information open; I just couldn’t get into enough to access it.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
Peppered with facts regarding early methods of taxidermy and additional related items, Still Life attempts to grab the reader with unspoken promises of morbidity, creepiness, oddities and gore, but only marginally succeeds. Taxidermists are described in a light that is most likely reasonably accurate – as isolationist outsiders with sinister senses of humor (one taxidermist wants to sloganize t-shirts with “I DO IT WITH DEAD ANIMALS”) and odd upbringings (“appealing” family tree members from the sticks who lived off of the land, eating and stuffing animals caught in the wild).
As an avid reader of non fiction in many subjects, this book initially intrigued me and piqued my interest. But, the book did not hold that interest for very long, and I establish it to be dry and dull overall. Since the book’s chapters focus on singular people rather than aspects of taxidermy, readers are forced to suffer the leader’s encounters with several taxidermists, and only a few of them are truly chapter-worthy (Chairbitch and The Schwendemans, for example).
There are certainly oddities (rumor has it that some taxidermists collect the genitalia from the animals they stuff) and morbidities (skinning via the erosion method), and even some bits of info that will outrage and horrify conservationists (turning live animals into dead objects of art, such as baby giraffes into high-back chairs, garbage cans out of elephant feet and rhinos into lamps, bookends and ashtrays – until the mid-1970’s).
In a later chapter, Milgrom takes on the task of stuffing one of the US’s most plentiful species – the gray stasher. In the chapter that follows, she receives a critique and rating of her work.
I establish myself trudging through just to end the book.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5