What I want for Christmas this year? Well, it’s always difficult to recall the objects that I desire when it is time to receive presents. I have been told I am difficult to buy for. I can’t see how that’s the case, when there are so many things I collect and am interested in. This time of year always stumps me with what I should put on my list. Vintage dresses and leather ankle boots are too subjective. Yes, it is true, I am fussy about glazes on vintage ceramics. So this year my list is relatively simple: books and an articulated horse skeleton! I have my top picks for what books I hope to find under the tree.

I have always been a collector. For as long as I can remember, it has been not just taxidermy: bones, anatomical models, paint by numbers, chalkware fruit and racially charged salt and peppers. Ever since I was a child I have had extensive collections, which even at a young age, I curated and refined.

I walked the beach and collected rocks that I would polish in my tumbler. When I was 9, I hung out with local gemologists and would get raw uncut specimens. I collected stickers, only fuzzy ones. From age six I collected novelty shaped soaps, stamps, licence plates, street signs, hub caps, upper deck baseball cards and personalized celebrity autographs. In grade five I started to collect vintage animal cages, vintage metal lunch boxes, Pez dispensers, porcelain glove moulds, chandeliers, all things X-files. I was continually refining and purging collections. I would collect avidly for several years, then change my focus. While collecting I would research my fixations, trying to know more about these objects than the people who sold them. I collected vintage animal masks, children’s toy guns pre-dating the 80′s, vintage heart shaped chocolate boxes, religious iconography, needlepoint, vintage Colonel Sanders figurines, cuckoo clocks and plastic lobsters.

I am pretty sure I have forgotten some of my collections. Over the years after many moves and garage sales I have pared down, but I wish as a child I had the foresight to rent a warehouse space to store all my collections with catalogue numbers and hand written notes. An installation that documented my life long fixations. I keep remembering collections that I had forgotten: Polaroid cameras, bouncy horses that children could ride on (don’t even ask how much space all those took up). How could I forget my brief but extensive collection of miniature dice and novelty shaped erasers? Or my collection of floaty pens which I still have! For a period I was known for my button collection. “Re-elect Moe Keck” was a favourite to wear. I was heart broken the night I came home from dancing and lost my “I am crazy about quilts” button which featured an illustration of a crazy quilt. I have always a had a love affair with material culture. Now all I need is an Ark to bring my to  collections with me wherever I travel.

“Whenever you’re a collector, you are really often held hostage to the objects of your passion”  -Ydessa Hendeles

The Conservatory has been a hive of activity of late, teas, tours, photo shoots and a cabinet of curiosity. Here is one  of Alyssa Katherine Faoro’s shots from a lovely afternoon shoot.

I have always been a collector, and often expand on what I collect. One collection I have aspired to start, but never did due to lack of space, is a collection of vintage prosthetic limbs. Who would not fancy a room full of leather straps and rubber appendages? On our trip to New York Christopher and I were strolling the streets of Brooklyn when a few house ahead I spotted something and took off running towards the find. It was a discarded prosthetic hand, left on the curb for the taking. We speculate it was a woman’s hand due to the size. I was overjoyed and strolled around the streets with my new acquisition and the beginnings of my new collection.

Pocket gopher donated by Rachel Poliquin

What to do when your hero comes to town? First things first: bake brisée lemon curd and meringue tarts. When it comes to my academic endeavors into taxidermy, Rachel Poliquin is listed multiple times in all my bibliographies. Poliquin’s curatorial and academic writings on the subject of taxidermy have made her the foremost contemporary expert on the subject and my hero. I have been in contact with Rachel since I first learned of her through her blog, Ravishing Beasts, investigation into all things taxidermy.  After several years of periodic emails I was excited, nervous and thrilled to have tea with Rachel in the CZC. Who needs David Bowie when you can be spending a stormy August afternoon with Rachel Poliquin?

I recently received a parcel in the mail. It was a small box packed with styrofoam peanuts and a charmingly peculiar pocket gopher, whose cheek poaches had been oddly stuffed outward and look like foam peanuts themselves. Rachel sent the taxidermied gofer to me. He is the perfect visual display of how taxidermy is an artifact rather then a specimen and the mount illustrates the human interpretation of the natural, this time not so naturally rendered with the cheek pouches incorrectly pulled out and filled. Imagine if you pulled out the pockets from your jeans and stuffed them with socks from the inside. I am now on the hunt for a bell jar to protect and display this treasure, 8” base and 8” high.  If you know where I can find one that ships to Canada, let me know!

How many people can say they had tea with their hero and received a gopher in the mail as a thank you present?

I was given a tip from a friend that when in New York, I have to go to Red Hook and visit a bar out of my dreams: Bait and Tackle. After an appointment at the Morbid Anatomy Library in Brooklyn, we walked over to Red Hook and on our way found a discarded child’s prosthetic arm on a side street, a perfect accessory to bring into the cabinet of curiosities that is Bait and Tackle. The low-lit establishment dazzles with the glint of glass eyes from the taxidermy animal menagerie. Groupings of deer heads with nature-themed needlepoints hang on the wall. A mountain goat wearing a vintage life preserver is ready if an impending deluge turns the bar into a modern day ark. A dapper fox stands guard of the spirits, not to be confused with bartender and owner Barry O’Meara. I am not sure who charmed me more, the taxidermy animals or Barry with a delightful brogue. Barry’s parents owned an establishment in Ireland stuffed to the rafters with mounted Victorian animals of all kinds. Barry’s kitschy eye for décor won my heart. And the drinks were just as heartfelt – a tequila and soda with hand pressed lime juice and organic gin with tonic and a tad of rosewater. In a city with so many people, Bait and Tackle was a respite, full of genuine inhabitants, refreshing libations and enough antlers to hang your hat. Who, hoo, can say no to sipping a cocktail in a nook with a gaggle of ever-staring ceramic owls and a prowling black bear. Bait and Tackle made me feel right at home.

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www.redhookbaitandtackle.com

320 Van Brunt Street, Brooklyn, NY

Our vist to The American Museum Of Natural History was long overdue, after much academic investigation and writing about the collection practices of Carl Ackley, the museum taxidermist who changed the face of natural history museums around the world. Natural history museums developed in the Nineteenth Century as storehouses of collections of products of nature. Museums organized and catalogued nature into taxonomies. However this changed with the collection and presentation practices of Carl Akeley, the forefather of museum taxidermy, and a pupil at Wards Natural Science Establishment. Akeley was the first exhibition designer and taxidermist to show detailed animal groupings in elaborately staged and painted natural habitats (Milgrom, 2010; Wonders, 1993; Haraway, 1984). Akeley employed melodramatic modes of exhibition that he described as “a peep-hole into the jungle” (Haraway, 1984; p. 29). At the American Museum of Natural History, preserved animals are exhibited in the context of moralistic displays. The stage is set with animals arranged as nuclear families, with mounts playing the roles of the brave, protective patriarch, the nurturing mother or the adoring child. (Wonders, 1993; Haraway, 1984). These painstaking constructions were not reflective actual knowledge of nature, but of a society that is instilling nature with it’s own mores and values.

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Photos by Christopher Bennell

While walking the hallowed halls of this storehouse and protector of natural history I became uneasy with the collection practices of another era on display and the sublime scale of animal bodies (not to mention the human bodies) and the questionable ethics in obtaining them. The signage glorified the act of collecting – a euphemism for killing – of the animals. In contrast to the Field Museum in Chicago, AMNH did not acknowledge the diorama artists, taxidermists and conservationists that a museum needs to maintain a collection of this scale. It was the sublime scale all these once-living creatures placed behind glass – for the first time in my life I was made squeamish by death on display in a museum.

The Contemporary Zoological Conservatory

The Contemporary Zoological Conservatory opened it’s door to the public in the spring of 2007. After five years of tours to the public, The Conservatory will be closing its doors due to animal restoration. The collection will remain available online as well as my academic explorations in taxidermy. Events and  new acquisitions will  be made available online.

On the back of the bear the fur is shaved down and there is a large, finely embroidered portrait of a woman with roses in her hair. Harper’s combination of animal as décor and decorated animal is an amusing twist on trophy display. The act of shaving down and marring the surface of the skin can be seen as the aggressive act of branding. But Harper’s stunning embroidery is a new exploration of tattooing, delicate and ornamental branding rather than the searing of livestock. Harper’s work is playful and thoughtful; he seamlessly stitches together haunting taxidermy and beautiful embroidery. The interplay of the textures of the fur and floss give his piece a visceral, tangible quality, making the tactile nature of the work almost palpable.

I can remember my first meeting with the Harper and only in my wildest dreams would I have imagined the CZC would be exhibiting his work. Harper has bestowed the CZC with the long-term loan of this breathtaking work. The Contemporary Zoological Conservatory has joined the ranks of the National Gallery of Canada, who recently purchased his work Last to Win for their permanent collection. The Look and Feel of a Real Wood Stove is currently on display in the CZC. David R. Harper has made my dream of exhibiting his work come true, and now our cinnamon bear is no longer lonely.

Lech and Sons Furrier 1974. courtesy of Karl Lech

In 1860 Wm. Lech and Sons Furriers Ltd. opened its doors in Peterborough Ontario. The local Furrier was known for its large brown bear that stood guard on the sidewalk of George Street in front of Lech & Sons. Gary and Karl Lech, the last operators of the shop affectionately named the bear Smokey. When Gary Lech took over the family business in 1955, the brown bear was still standing on his hind legs arms outstretched frozen in eternal roar. Karl Lech managed the store  that sadly closed in 2007 and is still the longest owned family business in Canada. The CZC’s bear stood guard rain or shine every day in front of the furrier from 1970 to 1989 when he was retired due to weather and vandalism related ageing. The bear was mounted by Mike Reader, a well known taxidermist in Peterborough. The bear was sold to antique dealer Neil Roger who lives in Oshawa then in 2008 the bear changed hands again and was sold to Clay Benson of Smiths Creek Antiques who kindly donated him to the CZC. Since then the bear has been featured in the Globe and Mail, National Post, Toronto Star, Magenta International Art Journal, As well as appearing with Yann MArtel on CBC National News and in album art for the band Thunderheist. What adventures will the bear and CZC be part of next?

Lech and Sons Furrier