Still Life by Melissa Milgrom

Author:Melissa Milgrom
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2013-02-01T02:05:28+00:00

Waterton really liked only his own taxidermy, claiming that all other specimens were "wrong at every point." He refused to show any mount at his museum that he deemed inexact and unfaithful—which is another way of saying that he displayed only his own mounts. He snubbed every grand exposition.

That said, he was a good taxidermist—perhaps too good, for his taxidermy innovations, as heartfelt as complimentary nomenclature, were too tedious to spawn any followers. For Waterton, every feather, every strand of hair needed tending, a monotony for which he alone had the patience. His method for preserving quadrupeds for natural history cabinets was torturous. First he removed every claw and bone. Then he peeled off the entire skin and pared it down with a knife until it was paper-thin. Even the ears had to be split (inner and outer parts), treated, and seamlessly reassembled. He dispensed with all internal wires when mounting birds and used the treated skin alone, instead of the rag-and-sawdust method. He renounced arsenic. To anyone who found these methods mind-numbing, Waterton quoted Horace: "By laboring to be brief you become obscure." He obviously knew what he was doing, because nearly all his mounts, including the Nondescript (now at the Wakefield Museum), have survived, unlike his wearisome methods. A person would have to be insanely obsessed to actually rebuild a bird feather by feather. Yet in this, Waterman reminds me a lot of Emily Mayer.

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