Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy [Hardcover]

Melissa Milgrom (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 8, 2010

It's easy to dismiss taxidermy as a kitschy or morbid sideline, the realm of trophy fish and jackalopes or an anachronistic throwback to the dusty diorama. Yet theirs is a world of intrepid hunter-explorers, eccentric naturalists, and gifted museum artisans, all devoted to the paradoxical pursuit of creating the illusion of life.

Into this subculture of insanely passionate animal lovers ventures journalist Melissa Milgrom, whose journey stretches from the anachronistic family workshop of the last chief taxidermist for the American Museum of Natural History to the studio where an English sculptor, granddaughter of a surrealist artist, preserves the animals for Damien Hirst's most disturbing artworks. She wanders through Mr. Potter's Museum of Curiosities in the final days of its existence to watch dealers vie for preserved Victorian oddities, and visits the Smithsonian's offsite lab, where taxidermists transform zoo skins into vivacious beasts. She tags along with a Canadian bear trapper and former Roy Orbison impersonator--the three-time World Taxidermy Champion--as he resurrects an extinct Irish elk using DNA studies and Paleolithic cave art for reference; she even ultimately 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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, March 2010: For many, taxidermy summons images of wildlife frozen in menacing poses, teeth bared in an eternal rictus; or maybe it's the lamented family cat, forever curled in purr-less slumber. With Still Life, Melissa Milgrom peels the skin back on Norman Bates's favorite pastime, dutifully tracking taxidermy from its 19th-century heyday (the beneficiary of a natural history boom), to its nadir as a reviled predilection in the age of PETA and conservation. It will tell most readers as much as they need to know about erosion-molded rats and replacement lips, ears, and eyelids, but it's the culture of iron-stomached men (and occasionally, women) that practice the art of skinned carcasses and stretched hides--those who wield "the calipers and the brain spoons"--that Milgrom's after. Beginning as a wide-eyed visitor to a third-generation stuff shop, she moves through an underworld of auctions, artisans, scientists, and the ultra competitive (albeit insular) World Taxidermy Championships, ultimately trying a queasy hand at squirrel-stuffing herself. Still Life an entertaining and illuminating adventure. --Jon Foro

---

Amazon Exclusive: A Letter from Melissa Milgrom, Author of Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy

Dear Amazon Reader,

People--even my own parents!--ask what sparked my interest in taxidermy. I tell them that in 1994 I went on a safari gone awry, which led me to the family workshop of the last chief taxidermist of the American Museum of Natural History. I was expecting him to be creepy like Norman Bates in Psycho, but he was a gentle naturalist, and his studio with its skeletons and birds, the beauty and the strange tools, evoked Darwin's study. The contradiction pulled me in, and still does.

Still Life took more than six years to write and that's because I had to shift my perception from one of skepticism to one of empathy and respect. I just saw Fantastic Mr. Fox and thought if Wes Anderson had been alive in the 1850s he'd have been a Victorian taxidermist, making little scenes of kittens dressed as brides. It's ironic--Victorians needed taxidermy to see exotic species from other continents, and we need taxidermists for the same reason--we long for animals as they disappear. Taxidermy evokes grandeur, which may help us comprehend the present mass extinction.

Another reason I find taxidermy engrossing is because it combines art, science, and hunting. In Still Life I shadowed the most gifted taxidermist I could find in each area: an artist, a field naturalist, and a hunter, each of whom is on a quest to understand nature on its own terms. English sculptor Emily Mayer preserves animals for Damien Hirst's most provocative artworks; her dogs are so boggling you have to poke them to see if they will move. Ken Walker, the hunter from Alberta who recreates extinct species, is self-taught. He won the World Taxidermy Championships three times and was a Roy Orbison impersonator, which actually makes perfect sense. Taxidermy is like karaoke. The person who loves the singer the most gets the voice right.

I hope you will enjoy the people you meet in Still Life whose obsessions and uncannily lifelike replicas create an art form that once was sublime and may be again.

Melissa Milgrom

(Photo © Ulalume Zavala)

---

A Look Inside the World Taxidermy Championships with Author Melissa Milgrom
(Click to Enlarge)

Ken Walker's Panda "Thing Thing"--recreated from bear skins-- Best of Show Recreations 2003

---

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In this absorbing blend of bright-eyed reportage and hands-on participation, journalist Milgrom demystifies the creepy art of bringing dead creatures back to life and dispels the myth that taxidermists merely stuff animals. The author's quest to understand the compulsion of obsessed hobbyists and exacting scientists alike to duplicate what nature has created starts in a New Jersey family workshop, where three generations—including the last chief taxidermist for the American Museum of Natural History—have mounted everything from three-toed sloths to fireflies. She visits the English sculptor who preserves dead animals for British artist Damien Hirst's displays; explores the arcane subculture of American taxidermy conventions where hundreds vie for best in show awards; and wanders the halls of the bankrupt Mr. Potter's Museum of Curiosities as collectors bid for auction lots of Victorian-era displays of squirrels drinking port and bespectacled gentlemen lobsters. Though her own squeamish attempts to preserve a squirrel are less than stellar, Milgrom's initial uneasy curiosity blossoms into genuine appreciation for a true art form, an enthusiasm the author imparts with style in this substantial study. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1ST edition (March 8, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 061840547X
• ISBN-13: 978-0618405473
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #383,539 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unexpected, wacky, and cool, February 23, 2010

By 

L. King "lucyferking" (Chepachet, RI United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Still Life is the kind of book that makes you want to be a journalist. With the skill of a secret agent, Melissa Milgrom insinuated herself into the surreal world of taxidermy. She made friends with all of the major players, and was able to write a book with an unbelievably broad scope.

What I loved about the book was the way it jumped from present day to historic. She fleshed out her observations (pun intended), by exploring their historical context. I really enjoyed learning about the Smithsonian and AMNH from the taxidermists perspective. These are two of my favorite museums in the world, and my appreciation for them has certainly been deepened by Still Life.

Not only did she observe taxidermists, but she became one. She stuck her head in the fetid stench of a pickling barrel. She was up to her elbows in squirrel blood. It was GREAT! She even wrote objectively about the "constructive criticism" her squirrel got at a competition.

One warning: I like to read a book while I'm eating dinner. You can't do that with this book. Milgrom's descriptions are way too graphic for mealtime reading. Any other time of the day, though, the book is great.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Stuffing with All the Trimmings, January 8, 2010

By 

takingadayoff "takingadayoff" (Las Vegas, Nevada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Taxidermy. The word brings to mind Alfred Hitchcock's creepy Norman Bates. Or maybe it reminds you of Roy Rogers' horse, Trigger, lovingly preserved in the Roy Rogers Museum. Either way, it just seems weird.

Journalist Melissa Milgrom starts her book on taxidermy by playing to our prejudices. The father and son team she hangs out with to learn about the taxidermy trade are at times defensive about their craft, and at other times exuberantly ghoulish. It's a little unsettling.

Having lured us into the strange world of recreating life with carcasses, Milgrom then reminds us of all the displays we've seen at natural history museums, including The Smithsonian, and how it allows us to see wild animals close up in natural-looking settings. Taxidermy's not just jackalopes and trophy fish.

Milgrom takes us to the 2003 World Taxidermy Championships, where the overwhelmingly male population of taxidermists show off their best works. Coincidentally, this is the same event that Susan Orlean wrote about in her article "Lifelike" in The New Yorker that same year. Orlean's article also appears in the The Best American Essays 2004. The article caught some of the atmosphere of the gathering - typically exuberant convention behavior with a side order of the macabre.

Milgrom's description of the event points up the unexpectedly political side of taxidermists. The "Our Father" and singing of the "Star-Spangled Banner" before the awards ceremony alert us to the conservative nature of the group. Then there's the sponsorship of the Championships by the National Rifle Association and hunting groups as well as the stars-and-stripes motifs decorating the members' baseball caps and t-shirts. Many of the taxidermists are also hunters, or at the very least, support hunters. Those moose heads and bear statues weren't all road kill, y'know.

As interesting as the American story of taxidermy is, Still Life really took off for me when Milgrom met up with a British taxidermist, Emily Mayer. Mayer works with the edgy conceptual artist Damien Hirst, who often features human skulls and animal carcasses in his works. The works are always controversial and neither Mayer nor Hirst apologize or make excuses for their often gruesome depictions of death. I was surprised by the detour into the British art world, and fascinated.

The history of British taxidermy is also quirkier than the American history. In Victorian times, taxidermy really took off in Britain, with stuffed animals a common piece of décor in many homes. Also popular at the time were whimsical taxidermical tableaux of kitten weddings or fairy tale characters, as well as believe-it-or-not style displays of two-headed pigs and other oddities. Those crazy Victorians.

Two extremely different sides of taxidermy come together near the end of the book when our old friend Emily Mayer attends the 2005 World Taxidermy Championships. Although Melissa Milgrom is somewhat distracted by having entered her own first attempt at taxidermy in the competition, it appears that the avant-garde Mayer got along famously with the good ol' boys of American taxidermy. Taxidermy, with or without politics, makes strange bedfellows.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Adventures in taxidermy, January 9, 2010

By 

W. DEMEDIO "Wizard Extradionaire" (Oz) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Ms. Milgrom really gets into the nitty gritty of taxidermy the art in this book. She shadows some of the worlds greatest taxidemists and gets into superb detail regarding the art as well as the science of taxidermy. I picked this book on a lark thinking it was mostly into photography but that is not the case at all. In fact, as she gets immersed in the art she actually takes it up herself. Taxidermy is an important way to chronicle the science of comparative anatomy. If it weren't for some famous taxidermists such as John J Audubon we would not have a look at many extinct species. But,this book gets into more than the science of taxidermy, it touches the soul of taxidermy. What some may see as morbid or even downright animal cruelty is shed in a whole new, interesting light. Some may shudder at the thought of this profession, but if you read this you will see it totally diferently.