Life in Death: The Victorian Art of Taxidermy

16 June 2007 to 15 June 2008

Before television, mass entertainment and the other delights of 21st century living, the art of taxidermy became a fashionable high point in Victorian style. Thriving on the huge emergent interest in natural sciences and the opening up of world trade routes throughout the 19th century, every stylish Victorian home included at least one display of stuffed animals and birds amongst its knick-knackery. Life in Death: The Victorian Art of Taxidermy puts the practice into its context enabling visitors to enjoy its appeal in the light of the Victorians’ way of life.

The centrepiece of the exhibition takes the visitor through a Victorian parlour, stuffed with the gewgaws typical of the era - from the horse’s hoof inkwell and the elephant’s foot umbrella stand to an original display of jewel-coloured birds in flight.

See also a spectacular pair of Victorian exhibits, one telling the story of ‘Who Killed Cock Robin?’ in graphic detail, the other showing a performance of acrobatic toads, frozen in time in the 1870s by the Sussex taxidermist Walter Potter.

From an era when there was a local taxidermist in every community, the displays also highlight the contributions of other leading Sussex taxidermists, including George Bristow of St Leonards who became involved in the scandal later to become known as ‘The Hastings Rarities Affair’.

Tree of Birds

Brighton’s quirky Booth Museum of Natural History houses one of the finest permanent collections of taxidermy in Britain. The founder, Edward Thomas Booth, built the museum in 1874 to accommodate his fast growing collections. His ambition was to display an example of every British bird and he pioneered the display technique of the environmental diorama, later adopted by public museums across the world. Booth’s original collections form the context for this new exhibition shedding light on the way taxidermy enriched the lives of so many Victorian families.