Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy
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Taxidermy is everywhere these days—from hip restaurants to posh clothing stores. Yet few realize that behind these "stuffed" animals is a world of intrepid hunterexplorers, eccentric naturalists, and museum artisans, all devoted to the paradoxical pursuit of creating the illusion of life.Into this subculture of intensely passionate animal lovers ventures journalist Melissa Milgrom, whose trek stretches from the family workshop of the last chief taxidermist for the American Museum of Natural History to the studio where an English sculptor preserves the animals for Damien Hirst’s most disturbing artwork. Milgrom tags along with a Canadian bear trapper and three-time World Taxidermy Champion as he re-creates an extinct Irish elk using DNA studies and Paleolithic cave art for reference. She even picks up a scalpel and stuffs her own squirrel. Transformed from a curious onlooker to an empathetic participant, Milgrom takes us deep into the world of taxidermy and reveals its uncanny appeal. The New York Times Book Review - Max Watman "Taxidermy" evokes hunting cabins and mounted white-tailed deer, pheasants in flight and lacquered largemouth bass—kitschy trophies memorializing a good kill—but in Still Life, Melissa Milgrom proves that the truth is more complicated and far more interesting…By capturing the jizz of the taxidermic world, Milgrom has pulled back the curtain on a surprising and intense culture within which meat and animals—both dead and living—are very real.
1 Schwendeman's Taxidermy Studio 12 The Champions 323 The Man Who Hunted for Science 684 How The Orangutan Got Its Skin 905 The Chairbitch 1226 Mr. Potter's Museum of Curiosities 1607 In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida 1918 Ken and the Irish Elk 2079 I Stuff a Squirrel 23010 Gray Squirrel, Yellow Dawn 248Sources 263Acknowledgments 283
