FROG MUSEUM
The Frog Museum in Estavayer-le-Lac, Switzerland, is one of the country’s more unusual visitor attractions, featuring numerous tableaux of everyday life in the 19th century – all enacted by a cast of diminutive amphibians.
The unique collection is attributed to François Perrier, who is believed to have assembled it over a 12year period between 1848 and 1860. Perrier was a former officer in the Napoleonic Guard who collected frogs on his walks in the countryside, taking them home and stuffing them with sand. The various scenes involve 108 frogs, which are portrayed at school, sitting down to communal dinners, as soldiers in the army, playing games of cards or billiards and, in one case, riding a stuffed squirrel. The Swiss collection, while nowhere near as extensive or elaborate, recalls the celebrated Walter Potter Museum, sadly broken up in 2003 (see FT306:36-41), which also featured a number of frogs in its tableaux, alongside kittens, rats, rabbits and birds. The Frog Museum also houses a collection of 200 Swiss railway lamps and a variety of militaria. www.museedesgrenouilles.ch.