Taxidermy in Victorian England :: Victorian Era

Taxidermy in Victorian England The Bone ArticulatorsTaxidermy is Such a Funny WordThe term taxidermy has its roots in Greek, and it means to arrange skin (Historical Review of Taxidermy 1). The school text from which I found most of my material (A Historical Review of Taxidermy) express that taxidermy could have meant piecey things in ancient terms, such as preserving mummies, or even leather working (arranging of animal skins) but by the time it reached England it was known quite solely as the arrangement of animal skins to diddle life (1).A Compressed HistoryTaxidermy was then not the graphics that we know today. In its earliest days (18th coulomb) birds were especially difficult to reproduce. after(prenominal) the long and tedious procedures, specimens were often unrecognizable. This changed with the ideas of a cutman named Becoeur (1718-1777). He was the first man to use a paste containing arsenic to preserve bird skins and his methods reaped tremendous results. You cou ld actually tell that the specimens were birds. Becoeur never published his recipe during his life so that he might protect his business, but in 1820 a French taxidermist named Louis Dufresne (1752-1832) did. This was a landmark in the history of taxidermy, for it allowed many good deal to be able to create life-like specimens very similar to Becoeurs (3).The British read Dufresnes books, and thus much of their taxidermy mimicked the French styles for a time. However, impertinent styles and methods of preservation began to appear, such as the non-poisonous preservative formulae developed by Rowland shelter (1848-1912) and Montague Brown (1837-1923) in the mid to late 19 th century (4).For the first half of the 19 th century, taxidermy was still trying to generate established. The difficulty owed much to the fact that the art was still being perfected. or so specimens from this period were rather stiff and un-lifelike in appearance. The idea of creativity feature with taxidermy had not yet taken flight, but this changed with the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. This show exhibited some of the first creative taxidermical (coined by me) works of art the particular works created by John autograph 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 eccentric and realism (5). A judge commented that they ... will go far towards acme the art of taxidermy to a level with other arts which have withal held higher pretensions (5).