A Thames & Hudson beautiful cabinet of curiosities with 338 colour illustrations of the covetable, weird and wonderful. The founder of London Taxidermy lends his 20 years of experience to the creation of this beautiful book and he catalogues and illustrates every aspect of this resurgent art form. Odd, beautiful, intriguing and strange and sometimes repellent, just like the history of taxidermy itself, taxidermy has come in from the cold. Stuffed animals are appearing everywhere from chic apartments to luxury boutiques. Museums have been dusting down their collections and putting them back on display, while contemporary artists have rejuvenated the practice. From its beginnings as a tool of natural history research, through crazes for anthropomorphic, zoomorphic and fake taxidermy, to its rediscovery by art, fashion and the design worlds of the 21st century, here are domes full of tropical birds, conjoined twin lambs, preserved cats from the Ancient Egyptians, an extraordinary massive diorama at the American Museum of Natural History showing a herd of bison and four prong-horned antelope, a buckle-kneed giraffe, skeletons, a strikingly beautiful Scarlet Ibis, four cases of a boxing match between two squirrels to a fake preserved dragon in a glass jar and the commercial uses of an elegant ostrich or Binks the cat at Bates, the famous hatters. 256 heavyweight glossy pages, 338 colour illus. Softback.
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