As large as life
Nick Hammond meets a master of the art of taxidermy
It could have been a Hitchcockian moment, shrieking violins and staring, shadowy forms pressing in from the walls of the whitewashed room. However, when William Hales turns on the light, it’s ‘ta da!’ instead—a showcase of the gloriously unrivalled colours of Nature in fin, fur and feather, realistically recalled and lovingly cased.
Mr Hales is a prize-winning taxidermist and he’s proudly showing me his display room in rural Lincolnshire. He’s been practising taxidermy—literally, the moving of the skin—for decades. ‘When I was about eight or nine, my school in Yorkshire used to have a big display of birds in the hall,’ he recalls a few minutes later as we sip coffee and watch goldfinches bickering over seeds on the patio. ‘I was fascinated by them. I remember thinking to myself “how did they do that?”. I was intrigued to know— that’s how I started.’
And start he did, from roadside crows to unwanted game birds. He’s since spent a lifetime learning how to re-create the appearance of life—and it’s not as easy as it sounds. We’ve all seen moth-eaten horrors in dusty corners of the homes of friends or relatives. I have a stuffed jay, which is a family favourite, but it’s no fine example of taxidermy, to be honest. However, good examples of the practice, such as the ones I’ve just seen in the display room, are breathtaking in their re-creation of the perfection of Nature.
Although crude taxidermy is relatively simple—there was a time when youngsters were encouraged to try their hand at it and the books of BB resound with many a mention—done well, it is nothing short of art.
Early examples of taxidermy as we know it began to appear in the 18th century, but versions of it had appeared in Egyptian tombs. It reached peak popularity during the reign of Queen Victoria, when middleclass homes were resplendent with mountedbird collections. these days, it’s undergoing another quiet renaissance, with Nature lovers more than trophy hunters at the top of Mr Hales’s 10-month waiting list.
the preservation of much-loved pets is another long-lived sub-category of taxidermy. Dickens used to write with his beloved raven, Grip, watching over his desk—he had the bird stuffed after it died from a suspected overdose of stolen paint. ‘On the clock striking 12, he appeared slightly agitated,’ Dickens later wrote to a friend. ‘But he soon recovered, walking twice or thrice along the coach house, stopped to bark, staggered, exclaimed “Halloa old girl!” (his favourite expression) and died. He behaved throughout with a decent fortitude, equanimity and self possession which cannot be too much admired.’
Grip, also the inspiration for Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem The Raven, today looks down on the Free Library in Philadelphia, USA.
The oldest mounted parrot in the world (1702) has long been housed in the Triforium in Westminster Abbey, standing sentinel for centuries over the wax effigy of Frances, Duchess of Richmond and Lennox. The former pin-up of Charles II kept the faithful African grey for 40 years, until her death—and the bird followed her just days later.
And who could forget George IV’S pet giraffe? A gift from Egyptian Viceroy Mohammed Ali—as was Cleopatra’s Needle, now on the Embankment—the long-necked bush browser had a tortuous journey from Africa to London and didn’t live long on arrival. Long enough, however, to win over the affections of the King, who had the poor creature mounted in deference. Its whereabouts today are, alas, a mystery.
As I continue my study of the Hales workshop and grounds—a gloriously secluded corner of countryside a stone’s throw from the Skegness coast—a Harris hawk weathers quietly in his mews and dogs sniff and fuss underfoot. What strikes me about Mr Hales as he leads me up an ancient staircase to his workshop proper—past the startling stares of mounted buffalo and eland—is the quiet dedication of the craftsman he has become through trial, error and an unwavering eye.
Not only is he a naturalist of the highest order, knowing intimately virtually every creature of mountain and dale, he’s also the consummate perfectionist, capturing the very essence of a beast in the minutest detail. If he prepares a barn owl (50% of which get killed by road traffic in their first year), for example, he’ll also build the surround— re-creating a fencepost with rusted barbed wire, the trail of lichen and a wandering weed. All these are moulded, styled and painted
by him and indistinguishable from the real thing.
A jay on a bare branch is being finished in the workshop while I’m there—it’s astounding in its perfection of feather, every lower mandible filament bristling as its blue eye sweeps the oak forest of my imagination.
There are no body parts or bad smells up here. Once the bird or animal is skinned, that’s all the taxidermist retains. Pickling and tanning the skin, creating the body moulds and building it back to life are then down to him or her. The workshop is full of rubber moulds of badger’s snouts, roe-deer eye impressions and fox faces needed to produce the finished product. There’s a drawer of eyes—someone actually manufactures plastic red-kite eyes, would you believe?—and minute measurements of the real carcass are taken and re-created. The result isn’t just a facsimile, but a reawakening of the creature itself.
‘It’s about preserving the beauty of Nature,’ Mr Hales says. It’s a little like magic, too, and nothing whatsoever to do with stuffing. William Hales Taxidermist, Lincolnshire (www.williamhalestaxidermist.co.uk; 01507 462864)