The number and proficiency of mammal taxidermy lagged behind avian mounts well into the nineteenth century: beasts – particularly murderous, snarling, dying beasts – were significantly more difficult to prepare than birds daintily placed on branches. Defects in ill-stuffed birds were not so obvious: "the feathers assist in a great measure to conceal such deformities," as one Victorian taxidermist said.
A black monkey photographed by Julie Dermansky. See all her natural history shots here + Plus, bigger, more articulated bodies meant that more things could go wrong, artistically speaking. There was the musculature in the animal’s legs, the tension across the back, the folds of skin at the neck, not to mention the facial expression of animals. As Thomas Bewick lamented in his General History of Quadrupeds first published in 1790, a large number of his apes and monkeys were “wholly impossible to trace from a stuffed skin, void of every kind of expression; the muscular parts, which should convey the idea of action, being generally ill supplied, or entirely wanting,” so that the greater part of his monkey tribe was without illustration.
If taxidermy was immensely popular from the early nineteenth century, it hardly holds that taxidermy improved as the decades proceeded. The Director of the Natural History Museum, London commented in 1881 that “I cannot refrain from saying a word upon the sadly-neglected art of taxidermy, which continues to fill the cases of most of our museums with wretched and repulsive caricatures of mammals and birds, out of all natural proportions, shrunken here and bloated there, and in attitudes absolutely impossible for the creatures to have assumed while alive.” This is not to say that there were no good taxidermy being produced, only that the majority of taxidermy was ill-conceived and structural specious.
Early mammal taxidermy involved building animals up from the barest internal armature by stuffing skins with straw, paper, tow, or some other soft material. Early taxidermied beasts still on display in natural history museums are often cracked, the split skin revealing the creatures’ straw underpinnings.) Certainly skins were bulked up , but the method only allowed the most rudimentary suggestion of muscles and tension. The worst problem was how skins tightened as they dried. Any hollows or wrinkles created to mimic natural skin undulations became flat and taut like a drum. This shrinking was particularly a problem with thin skinned animals such as lions or antelopes: shaggy fur or woolly coats hide innumerable problems. But even with hairy beasts, such early methods of “stuffing” could never achieve a true sense of anatomical correctness and vigour.
In the last decades of the nineteenth century, a new method of preparing large animal mounts became popular in Europe and North America. Instead of stuffing skins, an internal sculpture was made. The method with various idiosyncratic variations developed almost simultaneously by taxidermists across Europe and North America, each declaring to have developed the method himself. The process began similarly to traditional stuffing: four leg wires – bent to proper shape – were attached to a vertical centreboard of wood. Two additional rods supported the skull and another for the tail, if required.
This armature or “manikin” was wrapped tightly with thinly shaved strands of wood, known as excelsior, and bound with twine until it perfectly resembled the creature in every possible undulation and arch. To make up thick muscles in the legs, a bunch of excelsior was bound in place with twine. Smaller protuberances and muscles were made with soft, long fibre tow. The process was slow, meticulous, and required the constant critical assessment of a naturalist’s eye and comparison with the skin. Attention to the most minute of details was imperative. For example, to bring out the prominent muscles in the leg, William Hornaday, one of America’s greatest nineteenth-century taxidermists, recommended sewing through the leg along a vertical line “to produce certain depressions that exist between the larger muscles.” Achilles tendons were made with a twisted wire attached as the heel and wrapped with tow. The key was never to make the manikin too big – it could always be built up but removing layers of twine and excelsior was an arduous labour.
But the real secret to an anatomically correct mount lay in the next step: adhering a skin to the manikin. And on this subject, Hornaday was the self-proclaimed inventor of the clay-covered manikin, rather than other materials such as paper-maché or plaster. While the skin was absorbing arsenical soap on the inside and arsenical water on the outside, Hornaday instructs his readers to mix up enough clay – soften enough to smear – in order to cover the entire twine and wood sculpture with an eighth to a quarter of an inch thick coat. When the manikin was completely covered in clay from nose to tail – “a complete clay statue of the animal” – the skin was pressed into the clay leaving no air bubbles or looseness. Next, the skin was sewn up. “You can actually model the skin down upon the body,” Hornaday writes, “and it will not only take the exact form of the manikin – every depression and every elevation – but it will also keep it.” The taxidermist had to work quickly while the skin and clay were still wet (Hornaday recommended two taxidermists work together on a large mount, and the skin could be kept damp with towels). The efforts were enormous, but the result was a perfectly moulded skin, perfectly forming to every undulation and muscle. “There is a supreme pleasure in crowning a well-made manikin with a handsome skin, and seeing a specimen take on perfect form and permanent beauty as if by magic. It is then that you begin to be proud of your work; and finally you revel in it. You say to yourself, “This is art!” – and so it is."
A male lion by Rowland Ward from www.taxidermyemporium.co.ukThe next stage was the facial expression and mouth modeling. “The large Felidæ (tiger, lion, leopard, etc.) are the finest subjects for the taxidermist that the whole animal kingdom can produce. They offer the finest opportunities for the development of muscular anatomy, and the expression of higher passions.” As Waterton had profusely expressed over bird taxidermy in the last chapter, Hornaday was equally adamant: “In the first place, strive to capture the spirit of your subject.” How open should the mouth be? Unless it is represented in the act of seizing something, the jaws should not be opened too widely or the animal will “seem to be yawning prodigiously, instead of snarling.” The thick, fleshy parts around the nose and upper lip will lift and bunch together, the skin crowds the nostrils, and the lower lip falls away from the incisors. The eyelid are drawn over the eyes, and the eyebrows drawn together “until the scowl becomes frightful.” The ears should be flattened to the next and the tongue (if the mouth is open) “also pulls itself together, contracts in the middle, curves up at the edges, and makes ready to retire farther back between the jaws at the instant of seizure.”
Saturday, November 4, 2006 at 05:48PM
