"Do not ever go into Walmart, Home Depot, Eaton's, The Bay, Rona, Winner's and Home Sense to buy a work of art...Guess what? We have ways of finding out..."
Iain Baxter&
Friday 25 November 2011
Museum of Everything: The Original Burial & Death of Cock Robin
Anthropomorphic taxidermy–the practice of mounting and displaying taxidermied animals as if they were humans or engaged in human activities–was a popular art form during the Victorian and Edwardian eras. The best known practitioner of the art form is British taxidermist Walter Potter who displayed his pieces–which included such elaborate tableaux as The Death of Cock Robin, The Kitten Wedding, and The Kitten Tea Party–in his own museum of curiosities.
Walter Potter (2 July 1835 – 21 May 1918) was an English taxidermist noted for his anthropomorphic dioramas featuring mounted animals mimicking human life, which he displayed at his museum in Bramber, Sussex, England. The exhibition was a well-known and popular example of "Victorian whimsy" for many years, even after Potter's death; however enthusiasm for such entertainments waned in the twentieth century, and his collection was finally dispersed in 2003.
Mr Potter, stuffed rats and me Damien Hirst The Guardian, Tuesday 23 September 2003
Mr Potter's Museum of Curiosities at Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor is a fantastic Victorian-Edwardian collection of stuffed animals and curios. There are hundreds of items, all collected or devised by the original Mr Potter, who was a self-taught taxidermist. You can see he knew very little about anatomy and musculature, because some of the taxidermy is terrible - there's a kingfisher that looks nothing like a kingfisher. But there's some great stuff in there, too - two-headed goats, a rhino's head, a mummified human hand. As an ensemble, it's just mad.
My own favourites are these tableaux: there's a kittens' wedding party, with all these kittens dressed up in costumes, even wearing jewellery. The kittens don't look much like kittens, but that's not the point. There's a rats' drinking party, too - which puts a different construction on Wind in the Willows. And a group of hamsters playing cricket.
Now Mr Potter's grandson has had to put the collection up for sale. I've been told that someone tried to contact me to see if I would be interested in buying it. Sadly, as far as I am concerned, no one approached me - because, of course, if they had, the answer would have been yes. I've always wanted a museum like this. But now, the collection will go to auction to be sold as separate pieces - and is expected to go for anything between £250,000 and £3m. I've offered £1m and to pay for the cost of the auctioneer's catalogue - just for them to take it off the market and keep the collection intact - but apparently, the auction has to go ahead. It is a tragedy.
I've known about Mr Potter's for years. We used to take the kids up to see it all the time because they loved it. They had that sense of wonderment - you could see they were fascinated but repelled at the same time. And I love it, too. After all, this is how museums started. The people who collected artefacts and curios such as these - the Victorians who went round the world picking this stuff up - were real eccentrics. In a way, they were arrogant - stealing shrunken heads and pygmy skeletons - but the first museums were started with what they put together.
As a kid, I used to go to Leeds Art Gallery. They didn't have anything as weird as Mr Potter's, but I remember they had a stuffed Bengal tiger. And they kept live axolotls [a species of Mexican salamander], which looked like hairless foetuses. It all made an impression on me, and I've loved collections like Mr Potter's ever since. I would have liked to reopen Mr Potter's, adding my own pieces, perhaps, and even some artwork.
It would be very sad if the collection disperses. It only makes sense (whatever sense it does make) if it is kept together. Individually, what have you got except for some bad examples of taxidermy?
Photographed at The Museum of Everything in London, U.K., the day before the museum closed permanently.
ReplyDeleteAnthropomorphic taxidermy–the practice of mounting and displaying taxidermied animals as if they were humans or engaged in human activities–was a popular art form during the Victorian and Edwardian eras. The best known practitioner of the art form is British taxidermist Walter Potter who displayed his pieces–which included such elaborate tableaux as The Death of Cock Robin, The Kitten Wedding, and The Kitten Tea Party–in his own museum of curiosities.
ReplyDeleteWalter Potter (2 July 1835 – 21 May 1918) was an English taxidermist noted for his anthropomorphic dioramas featuring mounted animals mimicking human life, which he displayed at his museum in Bramber, Sussex, England. The exhibition was a well-known and popular example of "Victorian whimsy" for many years, even after Potter's death; however enthusiasm for such entertainments waned in the twentieth century, and his collection was finally dispersed in 2003.
ReplyDeleteMr Potter, stuffed rats and me
ReplyDeleteDamien Hirst
The Guardian, Tuesday 23 September 2003
Mr Potter's Museum of Curiosities at Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor is a fantastic Victorian-Edwardian collection of stuffed animals and curios. There are hundreds of items, all collected or devised by the original Mr Potter, who was a self-taught taxidermist. You can see he knew very little about anatomy and musculature, because some of the taxidermy is terrible - there's a kingfisher that looks nothing like a kingfisher. But there's some great stuff in there, too - two-headed goats, a rhino's head, a mummified human hand. As an ensemble, it's just mad.
My own favourites are these tableaux: there's a kittens' wedding party, with all these kittens dressed up in costumes, even wearing jewellery. The kittens don't look much like kittens, but that's not the point. There's a rats' drinking party, too - which puts a different construction on Wind in the Willows. And a group of hamsters playing cricket.
Now Mr Potter's grandson has had to put the collection up for sale. I've been told that someone tried to contact me to see if I would be interested in buying it. Sadly, as far as I am concerned, no one approached me - because, of course, if they had, the answer would have been yes. I've always wanted a museum like this. But now, the collection will go to auction to be sold as separate pieces - and is expected to go for anything between £250,000 and £3m. I've offered £1m and to pay for the cost of the auctioneer's catalogue - just for them to take it off the market and keep the collection intact - but apparently, the auction has to go ahead. It is a tragedy.
I've known about Mr Potter's for years. We used to take the kids up to see it all the time because they loved it. They had that sense of wonderment - you could see they were fascinated but repelled at the same time. And I love it, too. After all, this is how museums started. The people who collected artefacts and curios such as these - the Victorians who went round the world picking this stuff up - were real eccentrics. In a way, they were arrogant - stealing shrunken heads and pygmy skeletons - but the first museums were started with what they put together.
As a kid, I used to go to Leeds Art Gallery. They didn't have anything as weird as Mr Potter's, but I remember they had a stuffed Bengal tiger. And they kept live axolotls [a species of Mexican salamander], which looked like hairless foetuses. It all made an impression on me, and I've loved collections like Mr Potter's ever since. I would have liked to reopen Mr Potter's, adding my own pieces, perhaps, and even some artwork.
It would be very sad if the collection disperses. It only makes sense (whatever sense it does make) if it is kept together. Individually, what have you got except for some bad examples of taxidermy?