Speculative Taxidermy

RECONFIGURING ANIMAL SKINS45

purpose of recovering what may have been erased through classical
historiography.

HISTORIES WITH NO BEGINNING

As is well known, preserved animal bodies are perishable and vulnerable
to attack by insects and mold. Thus the material evidence of taxidermy
vanishes as we look back in time, curtailing the possibility of establish-
ing meaningful connections between modern taxidermy and any true
ancient precursor. According to Pat Morris, the oldest surviving taxi-
dermy mount is a hippopotamus skin stuffed for the purpose of appear-
ing in the collection of early naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605).^7
Prior to that point we find only speculation. To compensate, many nine-
teenth-century authors felt compelled to identify a silent beginning from
which to write a metanarrative of taxidermy that usually begins with a
disambiguation between taxidermy and Egyptian mummification. Inevi-
tably, the vast majority of taxidermy treatises and manuals from the
nineteenth century open with an introductory chapter that identifies the
material and theoretical matrix of the craft in order to justify the exis-
tence of the practice or to disclose something intrinsic to its charged but
cryptic appeal.^8 Montagu Browne’s Artistic and Scientific Taxidermy and
Modeling (1896)^9 and Oliver Davie’s Methods in the Art of Taxidermy
(1894) present opposing views.^10 While Browne situates the dawn of taxi-
dermy in Egyptian mummification, Davie discounts the effective rele-
vance of a link between taxidermy and mummification on the grounds
that “embalming is simply a means of preservation, is a separate art, and
cannot, strictly speaking, come under the head of taxidermy, while taxi-
dermy proper attempts to reproduce the forms, attitudes, and expressions
of animals as they appear in life.”^11
In line with Davie’s position, contemporary expert Pat Morris argues
that Egyptian mummies should not be linked to taxidermy because “they
do not represent an attempt to recreate lifelike form (nor were they usu-
ally ‘stuffed’), so taxidermy does not begin thousands of years ago with
the ancient Egyptians.”^12 Similarly, Rachel Poliquin states that “mummifi-
cation leaves the skin intact and in place, [so] the process cannot properly