Taxidermy

I was inspired by Charles Waterton a pioneering naturalist and traveller who invented a new method of taxidermy.  He was a colourful character, archetypal aristocrat whose rebellious alleged eccentricities are well documented.

Waterton sometimes enjoyed biting the legs of his guests from under the dinner table, imitating a dog.

He tried to fly by jumping from the top of an outhouse on his estate, calling the exercise "Navigating the atmosphere”. He devised his own methods for preserving animal skins and used them to create unusual caricatures of his enemies. He also utilized his taxidermy skills to create models critiquing political events of the day.

He displayed his anarchic sense of humour in some of his taxidermy: a famous tableau he created consisted of reptiles dressed as famous Englishmen and entitled "The English Reformation Zoologically Demonstrated." Another specimen was the upper half of a howler monkey contorted to look like an Amazonian Abominable Snowman and simply labeled "The Nondescript.

In a series of expeditions he explored the tropical rainforest of South America, travelled around North America and visited the West Indies. He recorded his adventures –including wrestling with an alligator. In 1806 Waterton inherited the family seat of Walton Hall where he devoted the next forty years of his life to running his estate as Britain’s first bird sanctuary.

Tess Stone