Rabbit Schoolroom

Created by Walter Potter in the late 1890s, the Rabbits' Village School contain 48 rabbits exhibiting various degrees of studiousness, impishness, and confusion.  One little rabbit cries because he blotted his book, one peeks at his neighbour’s slate, the teacher checks a student’s addition, one has a penknife, another admires a sock. The girl rabbits are sewing and knitting while the schoolmistress holds up something that looks like a thimble cosy, but is perhaps a red skirt. The schoolroom is complete with panelled French doors, bookshelves, books, pens and ink wells, slates and chalkboards, desks and benches, and a map, a clock, and a disciplinary cane hang on the wall.

Happy Family

Walter Potter’s maniacal utopian tableau called “The Happy Family” crowded with with some rather gaunt and rigid animals cats, dogs, owls, frogs, falcons, a parrot, a monkey, a tortoise, and a piebald rat.

The Kitten Tea Party

Walter Potter's Kitten Tea and Crocquet Party is housed in a 62 x 73 x 24 inch glass-fronted cabinet. Inside seventeen taxidermied kittens with oversized glass eyes and stretched mouths sit around an elaborately laid table pouring tea and offering each other cake on tiny china plates while next door twenty other kittens (not shown) enjoy themselves in the fresh air, some playing croquet, some watching the game under parasols, and one riding a bicycle.

Kitten Wedding

Completed in 1898, “The Kitten Wedding” was Walter Potter’s last large work (although he was working on squirrel court scene before his stroke in 1914) and the only one in which the animals are dressed. The lady kittens have cream brocade gowns, frilly knickers, gaudy beads and earrings. The bride has a brass ring on her finger, and the groomsmen sport wild woolly heads and morning suits. The whole scene includes eighteen kittens with enormous, bulging eyes, a parson, an altar, and a rail.

The Prize Fight

Edward Hart's Prize Fight was first displayed by Hart at the Great Exhibition. Consisting of five cases, the Fight shows two squirrels in various stages of a bozing match until the squirrel on the right is knocked out. The piece was bought by Lord and Lady Bangor and is still displayed in Castle Ward, Country Down, Northern Ireland, which has since been taken over by the National Trust.

Squirrel Suicide

The renegade Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan is known for his tragiocomedy.  His vision of a post-suicide squirrel strangely titled bidibidobidiboo (1996) is certainly no exception.  His other button-pushing taxidermic works include a donkey heaved up in the air by the weight of his cart and what appears to be a dead (or just exhausted) colt suspended from the ceiling. Cattelan's work is by no means limited to taxidermy.  In fact, he roams freely between sculptural media, whatever seems right for the purpose.  As Jeff Rian highlights, Cattelan is "an improviser of contexts, a manipulator of places and events, a Houdini-like escape artists ... at once a fool, entertainer, joker, magician, provocateur, and stuntman."

Image taken from the front cover of the October 1996 issue of Flash Art Internation; Rian quoted from the same issue.

Lion attack antelope

Organized by Tate Modern in London and the Reunion des Musees Nationaux and Musee d'Orsay in Paris, last year’s exhibition “Henri Rousseau: Jungles in Paris” was a spectacular display of not just the French artist’s painting but also an extensive selection of documents and various ephemera from the period. The most interesting addition was the stuffed lion attacking an antelope from the zoological galleries at Paris’ Jardin des Plantes, where Rousseau studied the anatomy and frozen movements of exotic animals. You can see just how closely he studied the creatures in his painting, “The Hungry Lions Throws Itself on the Antelope."  The lion's claws rip the antelope's nose, it's teeth embedded in the victim's neck.  Rousseau did add a few sensational touch with the gashes and red claws marks.

Cowboy Squirrel

In the basement of his funeral home in Madison, Wisconsin, along with his collection of giant stuffed fish (including a 500 pound blue marlin) and dozens of mammals, Sam Safilippo has set up a world of perky animal dioramas to entertain mourners at funerals.  Some of his dioramas are mechanised - squirrels rock back and forth in chairs - but most just seem to be having a good time on bucking broncos or watching half-naked chipmunks at the Topless Girlie Show. 

Information was taken from:
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/WIMADdead.html

Images were taken by from Lebovox's flickr page:
http://flickr.com/photos/etban/sets/72157600089674634/

Cowboy Squirrel Dioramas

In the basement of his funeral home in Madison, Wisconsin, along with his collection of giant stuffed fish (including a 500 pound blue marlin) and dozens of mammals, Sam Safilippo has set up a world of perky animal dioramas to entertain mourners at funerals.  Some of his dioramas are mechanised - squirrels rock back and forth in chairs - but most just seem to be having a good time on bucking broncos or watching half-naked chipmunks at the Topless Girlie Show. 

Information was taken from:
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/WIMADdead.html

Images were taken by from Lebovox's flickr page:
http://flickr.com/photos/etban/sets/72157600089674634/

Topless Chipmunk Show

In the basement of his funeral home in Madison, Wisconsin, along with his collection of giant stuffed fish (including a 500 pound blue marlin) and dozens of mammals, Sam Safilippo has set up a world of perky animal dioramas to entertain mourners at funerals.  Some of his dioramas are mechanised - squirrels rock back and forth in chairs - but most just seem to be having a good time on bucking broncos or watching half-naked chipmunks at the Topless Girlie Show. 

Information was taken from:
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/WIMADdead.html

Images were taken by from Lebovox's flickr page:
http://flickr.com/photos/etban/sets/72157600089674634/

White Squirrel Road Rally

In the basement of his funeral home in Madison, Wisconsin, along with his collection of giant stuffed fish (including a 500 pound blue marlin) and dozens of mammals, Sam Safilippo has set up a world of perky animal dioramas to entertain mourners at funerals. Some of his dioramas are mechanised - squirrels rock back and forth in chairs - but most just seem to be having a good time on bucking broncos or watching half-naked chipmunks at the Topless Girlie Show.

Information was taken from: http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/WIMADdead.html

Images were taken by from Lebovox's flickr page: http://flickr.com/photos/etban/sets/72157600089674634/

 

Renecke the Fox

One of Hermann Ploucquet's creations which received international acclaim at the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London.  Read more about Ploucquet here: http://www.ravishingbeasts.com/hermann-ploucquet/

The Stoat Dentist

One of Hermann Ploucquet's creations which received international acclaim at the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London.  Read more about Ploucquet here: http://www.ravishingbeasts.com/hermann-ploucquet/