Walter Potter's Curious World of Taxidermy
Apr 2014 · Sold by Penguin
Ebook
144
Pages
family_home
Eligible
info
About this ebook
Welcome to Victorian taxidermist Walter Potter’s fantasy world of rabbit schoolchildren, cigar-smoking squirrels and exemplary feline etiquette in Walter Potter’s Curious World of Taxidermy…
Walter Potter (1835–1918), a British country taxidermist of no great expertise, built anthropomorphic taxidermy tableaux that became famous icons of Victorian whimsy, including his masterpiece The Death & Burial of Cock Robin. His tiny museum in Bramber, Sussex, was crammed full of multi-legged kittens, two-headed lambs, and a bewildering assortment of curios. Potter’s inspired and beguiling tableaux found many fans in the contemporary art world: it was reported that a £1M bid by Damien Hirst to keep the collection intact was refused when the museum finally closed. Here, perhaps for the last time, many important pieces from the collection are showcased and celebrated with new photographs of Potter’s best-loved works. Darkly witty and affecting, Walter Potter’s Curious World of Taxidermy makes a charming, whimsical (and yes, slightly morbid) gift.
Walter Potter (1835–1918), a British country taxidermist of no great expertise, built anthropomorphic taxidermy tableaux that became famous icons of Victorian whimsy, including his masterpiece The Death & Burial of Cock Robin. His tiny museum in Bramber, Sussex, was crammed full of multi-legged kittens, two-headed lambs, and a bewildering assortment of curios. Potter’s inspired and beguiling tableaux found many fans in the contemporary art world: it was reported that a £1M bid by Damien Hirst to keep the collection intact was refused when the museum finally closed. Here, perhaps for the last time, many important pieces from the collection are showcased and celebrated with new photographs of Potter’s best-loved works. Darkly witty and affecting, Walter Potter’s Curious World of Taxidermy makes a charming, whimsical (and yes, slightly morbid) gift.
About the author
DR. PAT MORRIS is a biologist, and formerly a senior lecturer in zoology at Royal Holloway, University of London, specializing in mammal ecology, particularly hedgehogs and dormice. He is the author of twenty books about natural history and taxidermy and has published more than 150 scientific papers and magazine articles on natural history topics. He first visited Walter Potter’s museum in Bramber in 1955 and thirty years later became a technical adviser to its owners. With their help, he gained an unrivaled knowledge of Potter’s work, and first published as Walter Potter and His Museum of Curious Taxidermy in 2008, a record of a unique collection now dispersed by its sale in 2003.
Photographer JOANNA EBENSTEIN is an artist and producer based in New York. She runs the Morbid Anatomy blog and the Morbid Anatomy Library in Brooklyn, which makes available to the public her collection of art, ephemera, books, and curiosities.
Photographer JOANNA EBENSTEIN is an artist and producer based in New York. She runs the Morbid Anatomy blog and the Morbid Anatomy Library in Brooklyn, which makes available to the public her collection of art, ephemera, books, and curiosities.
Rate this ebook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
