Still Life

by Melissa Milgrom

  Mayer stands in line, holding Last Journey, Precious Cargo, while the woman in front of her registers. "It's the first time I've done this," the woman says timidly. She needs to find a place to sleep, she says. "You can share a room with me," McDonald purrs, flashing a big, gap-toothed grin. Then he sends the woman upstairs to drop off her mounts for judging. When it's Mayer's turn, McDonald shouts with a brogue, "Bloody Chairbitch and you only bring one specimen! Go put a red dot on the bloody nose of your terrier!"

  When the guild was established in 1976, taxidermy was floundering. It was an era of ecological awareness, and the big museums, having already plundered every jungle and ice floe for specimens, needed no more. So they began to ax taxidermy posts and shut down their workshops, sending their taxidermists off to find work at the big commercial firms, most of which were barely solvent, because hunting had dropped off, too. At the time, an American taxidermist passing through England called taxidermy a profession fraught with apathy and isolation. A group of British museum taxidermists, troubled by all this, got together and formed the guild.

  In 1976, the guild may have had lofty ambitions, like those of the World Taxidermy Championships, but the people trickling into the hall now—museum, commercial, and amateur taxidermists; people interested in modelmaking and natural history; passionate ornithologists, lepidopterists, and skeleton collectors; people who spend a great deal of time pondering life forms—are exceptionally laid-back. (Had Charles Waterton walked in here, I bet he would have preached fire and animation.) These people are, for the most part, Mayer's friends and colleagues, people she relies on for specimens, reference, and technical advice. At Hirst openings, Mayer is known as a taxidermist who is an artist; here she is known as an artist who is a taxidermist. She's known some of the guild members for more than thirty years. They call her "wild," "artsy," and a bit "daft."

  I think about all the changes Mayer must have seen since she joined the guild in 1977: older museum taxidermists have retired and died; younger taxidermists have quit taxidermy to earn a living doing something else. Some of them are at the convention, including Derek Frampton, a former Natural History Museum taxidermist who now uses his sculpting skills to make props and robotic creatures for movies such as the Harry Potter series. He has also prepared study skins and dogs for Tring. "Now I'm one of the senior members," Mayer says with a bittersweet intonation. "At least they haven't kicked me out yet."

  The turnout is low this year, only 40 out of 139 paid members (in 1990, the membership was nearly 300). Even so, the group has a camaraderie that Mayer finds genuine and uplifting. "I love the passion and the obsession—you know, the striving for," she says. "And I love the company." Because of this, and because of the college campus, the show feels like a reunion. It is as informal as a pub crawl. The ballot box is a plastic ice cream container. The "trade show" is a trade stand (Jack Fishwick's artificial snow and resin icicles and a table of tanned pelts). The nametags are totally unnecessary—everyone is chummy—but Mayer still growls, "Anyone without a badge is going to get a severe slapping!"

  I wander around, listening. No one is talking about shoddy craftsmanship or how it's unnecessary to hunt animals for taxidermy—two topics that perennially come up at guild shows. Instead, I hear this:

  "I've seen a bloke undress a girl with a bullwhip."

  "I like a little pain."

  "Her clothes were on with Velcro. She didn't have a wink on her. Most guys went up to inspect the body. You're talking twenty feet!"

  While more people register, Mayer and I sit in the cafeteria, eating our dinner of lamb and potatoes. Unlike the WTC, with its religious revival overtones, there are no place mats with the NRA logo (indeed, many guild members oppose hunting, which in England primarily means foxes). No one says the Lord's Prayer. In fact, no one mentions taxidermy at all except to cancel tonight's slide show: "Given the late hour, we'll go to the bar and relax and have the slide show tomorrow."

  The campus bar radiates blue like an aquarium. It has blue walls and blue tables and is lit with fluorescent sconces. It pulses with pop music—Sheryl Crow, the Rolling Stones. I find Mayer drinking pints with her mates, Jack Fishwick and her two assistants, Dave Spaul and Carl Church (both former welders). They exchange kisses, arms draped over each other's shoulders.

  I pull up a chair next to Fishwick. The last time I saw him was at the WTC. He was wearing a baseball cap and binoculars and was almost arrested for birding too close to Lake Springfield's power plant. He told the cops, "You can't arrest me—I'm a judge!" They let him off. Taxidermy's British ambassador, Fishwick works for museums throughout Europe and judges international taxidermy competitions, where his ornithological expertise and unsparing critiques are legend. Even though he opposes hunting ("It's hard without a gun") and he believes that taxidermy is "not art," American and European taxidermists alike respect him (which for taxidermists, who are notoriously jealous, says a lot). Although I yearned to go back in time and watch herons (while reading Virgil) with Charles Waterton high up in a lofty tree, I was just as happy to be sitting here drinking pints with Fishwick. I love to listen to bird taxidermists describe birds, because their language is exacting and their observations are keen and passionate. Fishwick looks up, grinning, and says, "I've a tattoo of a ship on my stomach—see if you can find the mast." Riotous laughter erupts as I turn red and guzzle my beer, trying to regain my composure. The beer, however, gives me the courage to change the subject and ask Church and Spaul about Damien Hirst.

  "He's cooked [dinner] for me!" says Spaul, beaming. "I get a big buzz out of just knowing that I've contributed to [his art]. I've signed it all—embedded in the plastic ... It's just a big buzz!"

  More people join us. Everyone is drinking pints. Mayer tells them that I'm a journalist writing a book about taxidermy, which puts me on edge. Taxidermists often distrust the press, and for good reason. They resent the media's morbid depictions and how the media tend to focus on unscrupulous taxidermists, such as Sclare of the Get Stuffed shop, rather than on those whose passion evokes that of the early naturalists, for whom taxidermy was a zoological tool. Because of this, I expect the conversation to become guarded. I am wrong.

  These serious naturalists do not want to talk about the Linnean Society or Captain Cook's voyage in the Endeavour. Instead, they talk about their most bizarre jobs, and they play up all the blood and guts—something their American counterparts would never do in front of a reporter. I'm surprised that they are being so explicitly gross around someone they've just met. I'm also surprised by my own reaction. Soon I'm laughing convulsively at stories I would have found repulsive a year ago: the menacing poodle made into a therapeutic rug to help rid a boy of his fear of dog bites; the man who asked to have his amputated leg made into a lamp stand; the pickled terrier whose sunken eyes needed replacements. They chat about blindfolded taxidermy: eating the specimens!

  The women are as raunchy as the men. Ruth Pollitt, then the National Museum of Scotland's skinner, is describing her job. "I do all of the measuring, pickling, tanning, and finishing of the study skins and some skins for exhibitions, from mice to elephants. I've worked on three thousand mammals in ten years," she boasts. This year alone, Pollitt has prepared 360 felines for the museum's new Cats of the World Hall. That fact is astounding; I want to hear more. But Ruth is already on to another topic: the time she (and five others) skinned a giraffe in six hours. It was a highlight of her career as a skinner, and I sit with open notebook, eager to get it all down. But she's not talking to me specifically; she's talking to the taxidermists in the room, two of whom work with her at the museum. So she says instead, with a huge grin, "Giraffes are very well-endowed." Loud laughter. My ears perk up.

  Taxidermists can talk endlessly about animal genitalia, penis bones in particular. I was surprised to learn that certain mammals have bones in their penises, and taxidermists collect them as trinkets or curiosities. Even the Schwendemans and Mayer have raccoon baculums in their studios, which Mayer says are
fertility talismans. (After the show, I gave a raccoon baculum to a friend who had unsuccessfully attempted in vitro fertilization, and she got pregnant the next month.) As it happens, in addition to penis bones, Pollitt collects testicles, kangaroo scrotums, and other sexual things. "I collect the testes. I put them on a metal tray and prepare them later. We keep the penis bones. We have a national penis collection. The National Penis Collection of Scotland," she says, pausing, everyone doubled over in laughter. "You have to watch your bollocks in that place!"

  A sociologist might say that taxidermists are purposely lurid, because by making fun of themselves, it's somehow less hurtful when outsiders call what they do strange. I'm sure there's some truth in that, but I honestly think everyone in the bar that night was simply drunk and having a good time. And because most guild members get their specimens from natural death, that also eliminates the guilt factor. Still, I had made a great effort to come to England to attend this show so that I could learn something about taxidermy. I had high hopes of getting some real information the next morning at the death mask demonstration.

  When I walk in, Peter Summers, a soft-spoken, self-effacing taxidermist with the National Museum of Scotland, is adjusting his latex surgical gloves. On the lab table to his right is a mangy black domestic cat—the demonstration victim. The method Summers is about to demonstrate is the one he's currently using at the museum for the Cats of the World Hall. Mayer, who hasn't done a death mask in fifteen years, will assist him.

  Dressed in a black T-shirt with white handprints over her breasts, Mayer scans the place to see if everyone has arrived, then she introduces the competition judges. Everyone boos. Someone shuts off the lights, and Mayer sits in the dark, watching Summers through the holographic rolling-eyeball sunglasses. The first thing he does is deftly rub clay over the cat's face to flatten its fur. The idea is to capture a fresh imprint of its facial muscles. He says, "The next thing we're going to do is..."

  "I'd reposition the lips now," Mayer interjects.

  "I'd inject fluid into the eyeballs now," he continues.

  He fastens a foam collar around the cat's neck to immobilize it while he skillfully drips plaster onto its face until it resembles a gargoyle.

  "Stop it! Don't put any more on!" scolds Mayer.

  "He's enjoying himself!" a taxidermist named Colin yells from the back of the auditorium. "No lumps in the plaster!"

  "No one makes lumpy plaster but you, Colin!" Mayer shouts back.

  "Peter makes lumpy plaster!"

  Mayer reaches her finger into a jar of wave-and-groom hairdresser's wax that Summers is using as a separator (to keep the fur from sticking to the plaster) and works a little into her own spikes. Nobody is taking notes.

  "I think it's dry," says Colin.

  "It's not," insists Summers.

  "You're making a mess," says Colin.

  "Disaster!" says Summers with resignation. "I don't know what to say except sorry."

  After the failed demonstration, Mayer's assistants, Church and Spaul, present slides from the WTC. I'm curious to hear a British perspective on an American show. They deliver.

  Church: It's a big show and they take it very seriously. They're great people, but they haven't got a sense of humor, so I wouldn't joke with them.

  Spaul: Food is cheap. Taxi's cheap. Go to Wal-Mart. I got really nice jeans for eight dollars. The bar is next to nothing. I gave up drinking for five years until I went there, and then I took it up again.

  At the World Show, mammal judges use a checklist of 139 items to score a mount. Here things are far simpler and for a reporter an utter joy. The guild has one criterion for judging mounts: is it an acceptable standard?

  Sable: yes.

  Zebra: yes.

  Sika: no.

  In the end, Spaul wins Best Mammal, earning his accreditation (more important than a rosette because he has demonstrated that he can master the techniques established by the guild). Mayer takes second place with the dead terrier. Fishwick's kookaburra wins Best Bird and Best in Show. That night in the cafeteria, Mayer presents the awards in what can only be called a non-ceremony. "Your certificates are over there," she says flatly, pointing to a stack of loose papers. "Otherwise, it would take all night."

  After dinner, Mayer says, "Happy drinking. See you at the bar." We all trudge to the bar. I'm starting to wonder whether I should have stayed at Mayer's house and read about taxidermy in the guild journal. As much as I love English beer, I hadn't come here for the pints. I had come to see if I could gain a deeper understanding of why people are drawn to taxidermy. I'm frustrated because the people in this room could provide insight into that question—if they are willing. I'm about to give up when someone points to a table near the bar, where a man with wavy silver hair, a long sharp nose, and piercing blue eyes is sitting nursing a pint. He has on a gray T-shirt and jeans, and in the blue glow of the blue bar, everything about him looks blue, including his skin. His name is David Astley, and he is one of the last living links to British taxidermy's glory days—and my last chance to connect the guild with the past. I grab my notebook, wander over to his table, and tell him about my research. He nods and invites me to sit down.

  In the mid-1970s, before he was in the movie The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, about the Sex Pistols, Astley was a taxidermist at Rowland Ward's, the firm established by England's most famous taxidermist (no relation to Henry Ward). Ward's mounted trophies for every elite hunter from Winston Churchill and British royalty to General Francisco Franco and a long list of movie stars. The firm also acted as an agent for museums and rich collectors, procuring polar bears, dugongs, and great auks (real and fake) for their dioramas and trophy rooms. Commercial firms such as Ward's flourished in England at the turn of the twentieth century. After World War I, however, only a few leading firms survived. Restrictions on the wanton slaughter of migratory birds, for instance, were starting to be imposed, feathered millinery was passé, and taxidermy was slumping. Ward's hung on until 1983.

  Taxidermists often call Rowland Ward the British Carl Akeley. But if Akeley was Henry David Thoreau, Ward was Stephen King. He loved the sensation of the savage beast. His mounts were purposely terrifying. He had a gift for creating narrative tension by manipulating a predator's whiskers and spreading its paws to make the claws look like they could rip you to shreds. His open-mouthed snarl was peerless. From 1862 to 1890, Ward displayed groups of aggressive deer and leaping tigers (and a leopard poised to maul a dark-skinned toddler) at all the big European expos, where Victorians lined up to be shocked and entertained by his blockbuster thrillers. He died a rich man.

  Ward called his London shop his "Zoological Studios" and "Gallery of Natural History." The public preferred "the Jungle." World-famous explorers, travelers, and sportsmen all gathered there to swap tales of stalking African lions or shooting Bengal tigers. In its heyday, Ward's received an order for sixty rhinos, dispatched during a single expedition.

  Ward forbade photography in his shop (trade secrets, I assume). His autobiography is incredibly scarce because he published only fifty copies himself. However, Pat Morris, the retired University College London zoologist who would be giving the guild show's closing lecture, spent twenty years gathering materials on Ward, which he wove together in a self-published monograph, Rowland Ward: Taxidermist to the World. And now seated here in the bar is David Astley, an actual former Ward's employee.

  In an old portrait, Ward, dressed in a long dark suit coat and holding a craniometer and lion skull, looks professorial: the serious naturalist with stylishly tapered beard and mustache. Ward quit school at fourteen to work at his father's taxidermy firm, mounting bird illustrator John Gould's prized hummingbirds and other famous specimens. At twenty-two, realizing the potential of tabloid taxidermy, he struck out on his own. His first triumph was the McCarte lion, which killed its tamer in 1873. Ward posed it in wounded agony, causing a sensation that would launch his phenomenal career. Other effigy-like things followed. He turned the hooves of H
olocaust, the champion racehorse, into inkwells, and rendered Cloister, another racehorse, into a regal trophy head (now at the National Horseracing Museum). London Jack, the dog that collected money for charity at Waterloo station, was, after his death, stuffed and outfitted with baskets to continue his benevolent duty. Lady Flora, the championship shorthorn cow, was a Ward mount, as was Brutus the circus lion; Farthest North, an Eskimo dog Robert E. Peary took on his foot expedition across Greenland; and, of course, the head of Persimmon, King Edward VII's championship racehorse. Business was booming, and England never had to say goodbye.

  In spite of the fetishism, Ward was considered a naturalist. These were the days when taxidermy was taxidermy, no matter what one had stuffed. A member of the Zoological Society of London, Ward was granted the royal warrant "Naturalist, by appointment to his Majesty the King," which he used on his trade label to promote himself.

  While Ward was establishing himself abroad, his firm was developing a prosperous sideline of animal furnishings. So imaginative was the firm that it is difficult to refrain from describing these accessories now. The firm turned crocodiles into umbrella stands, baby giraffes into high-back chairs (towering), and Siberian tigers into rugs. It made bowls out of lobsters, doorstops out of ostriches, garbage cans out of elephant feet, and inkstands out of rhino horns. Only at Ward's could a person buy "zoological lamps"—kerosene (later electric) lamps made out of eagles, owls, black swans, birds of paradise, and, on occasion, monkeys. Ward's elephant-foot liquor cabinets were especially popular with kings and rich hunters—rivaling even Rowland's brother Edwin's grizzly bear dumbwaiter (an upright grizzly holding a cocktail tray in its paws—an idea that Rowland would claim as his own). No one forged better great auks or dodos than Rowland Ward—or lied about them so convincingly. Surprisingly, the firm continued to turn rhinos and antelopes into ornamental bookends, lamps, and ashtrays up until the mid-1970s.