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| Take an insider’s gander at the world of taxidermy |
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Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy by Melissa Milgrom
c.2010, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
$25/$31.95 Canada
320 pages
Your love affair started when you were a mere babe. Sometime during your first days on Earth, your mother tucked a stuffed animal into the crib beside you. It was soft and comforting, a nice Mom substitute.
You were hooked. By age three, you couldn’t go anywhere without your fluffy friend. By five, you’d loved several of them to ragged pieces. But by age 11, more or less, the love affair was basically over.
Or was it? In the new book, Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy by Melissa Milgrom, you’ll see that many people still love “stuffed” animals. But these furry critters are no mere toys.
On an accidental 14-day trek through Tanzania with a group of tour guides, Melissa Milgrom stumbled upon a hunters’ carcass room. She was shocked, but slightly intrigued. Once home, she was “drawn to” a small father-and-son taxidermy shop in New Jersey. She’d noticed the mounts that populated the window of Schwendeman’s Taxidermy Studio, and she had to know more.
“Taxidermy,” she says, “is the art of taking an animal’s treated skin and stretching it over an artificial form … then carefully modeling its features in a lifelike attitude.” Some call it art. Others call it a hobby. Nobody says the animal is “stuffed.”
Throughout history, taxidermy has had its passionate supporters. Working for museums, a few (mostly male) taxidermists have literally given their lives in search of the perfect diorama, the largest elephant, the biggest challenge. They treated mounts almost like children, amassing huge collections. They catered to cultural tastes, or ignored it.
Today, talented taxidermists are hired by museums to make their magic, sometimes spending months on their work. Taxidermists have their own World Championships, Milgrom discovered. They might or might not be hunters or gun-rights supporters. They love a challenge, they hate seeing shortcuts and they possess strong stomachs.
From a fake panda (made by a Canadian taxidermist from brown bear skins) to an English artists’ studio; from the Smithsonian Museums to an African mountaintop; beyond, and back to a magnificent prehistoric re-creation, Milgrom watched as the feathered and furred were mounted and posed.
Then, she took the plunge herself.
Right about now, I imagine you’re either wrinkling your nose in disgust or muttering some version of “Heck, yes!” I assure you, in both cases, author Melissa Milgrom seems to agree.
Still Life is not about hunting or killing animals; in fact, quite the contrary. Many taxidermists mount animals that have died natural deaths. This is not always a gruesome story – it also celebrates the lives of men who made it their lives’ work to ensure that future generations would be as awed by nature as they were.
And, this is not a controversy-tackler. Milgrom chooses, instead, to focus on science, culture, intrigue and humor.
Though my own first inclination was to say “Eeeeeuuuuwww,” I ended up quite captured by Still Life and I think you might be, too. If you’re an outdoorsman, museum-goer or a pragmatic animal lover, find this book, grab a shopping bag and stuff it.
Terri Schlichenmeyer has been reading since she was three years old and never goes anywhere without a book. She lives on a hill in Wisconsin with two dogs and 11,000 books. Readers with questions or comments may write to her in care of this publication. |
| 4/14/2010 |
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