Taxidermy in Victorian England :: Victorian Era

Taxidermy in Victorian England The Bone ArticulatorsTaxidermy is Such a Funny WordThe word taxidermy has its roots in Greek, and it means to order skin (Historical Review of Taxidermy 1). The text from which I found most of my fabric (A Historical Review of Taxidermy) stated that taxidermy could have meant many things in past times, such as preserving mummies, or even leather working (arranging of puppet skins) alone by the time it reached England it was known quite solely as the arrangement of animal skins to represent life (1).A Compressed storeyTaxidermy was then not the imposture that we know today. In its earliest geezerhood (18th century) birds were especially difficult to reproduce. After the long and tedious procedures, specimens were often unrecognizable. This changed with the ideas of a Frenchman named Becoeur (1718-1777). He was the first man to use a paste containing arsenic to preserve bird skins and his methods reaped amazing results. You could actually tell th at the specimens were birds. Becoeur never publish his recipe during his life so that he might protect his business, alone in 1820 a French taxidermist named Louis Dufresne (1752-1832) did. This was a landmark in the history of taxidermy, for it allowed many people to be able to create life-like specimens precise similar to Becoeurs (3).The British read Dufresnes books, and thus often of their taxidermy mimicked the French styles for a time. However, new styles and methods of preservation began to appear, such as the non-poisonous preservative formulae developed by Rowland Ward (1848-1912) and Montague Brown (1837-1923) in the mid to posthumous 19 th century (4).For the first half of the 19 th century, taxidermy was still trying to become established. The difficulty owed much to the fact that the art was still being perfected. Most specimens from this period were rather stiff and un-lifelike in appearance. The idea of creativity combined with taxidermy had not yet taken flight, but this changed with the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. This show exhibited approximately of the first creative taxidermical (coined by me) works of art the particular works created by John Hancock of Newcastle especially grabbed the attention of the judges. Hancocks works, such as his tableaux of a falcon grappling with a heron, were unsurpassed at the time for their quality and realism (5). A judge commented that they ... testament go far towards raising the art of taxidermy to a level with otherwise arts which have hitherto held higher pretensions (5).