Taxidermy & Natural History

In an August 2016 ATG wrote that the scrimshaw market had been in the doldrums but was showing signs of a return to buoyancy. Judging by the latest results from Massachusetts auction house Eldred’s, bidders are certainly prepared to push the boat out for the best examples.

A member of a gang which stole taxidermy from a well-known dealer a year ago, has been sentenced.

A rare dodo skeleton – the first almost complete specimen in nearly a century – has sold for £280,000 at auction.

This rare dodo skeleton – the first almost complete specimen in nearly a century – carries an estimate of £500,000 at Summers Place Auctions’ November 22 sale.

Scrimshaw has been in the doldrums during the last few years with several dealers and auctioneers holding back on sales until there is more legislative clarity over the rules concerning its sale and importation.

A large scrimshaw-decorated nautilus shell by Charles B Wood sold for an unexpected £8500 at Charles Miller’s latest sale of maritime antiques in London. It sold to a UK private collector.

Specialist taxidermy dealer Alexis Turner has lost a significant portion of his stock following an extraordinary raid on a London warehouse.

Cased fish, once the only acceptable face of the taxidermy market, have cooled since the 1990s when prices in excess of £3000 were commonplace.

Two of the best-known anthropomorphic creations of the celebrated Victorian taxidermist Walter Potter (1835-1918) resurfaced at Treadway Toomey in Oak Park, near Chicago, Illinois, on February 6.

An antique narwhal tusk that faced destruction following a dispute over paperwork has been returned to its owner after a judge ruled its confiscation by customs had been “unreasonable”.

Fancy spending thousands of pounds on a lovely lump of vomit?

This remarkable fossil of one of the largest animals ever to have walked the Earth becomes the first large dinosaur skeleton to be offered at auction in the UK at Summers Place Auctions in Billingshurst, West Sussex, on November 27.

“An armadillo for you, from Jonathan Ross,” says the courier as he returns a box midway through my interview with Alexis Turner.

Taxidermy is notoriously difficult and expensive to repair so condition is key.

AMONG the more run-of-the-mill furnishings that constitute the bulk of the popular Interiors sales at Christie’s South Kensington, there are often a handful of more quirky items.

Scrimshaw, or carved bone and ivory, is very collectable, but the signature and scenes on this 7in (18cm) long whale’s tooth put it in a special league.

A YEAR that marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species has already produced several television and radio programmes on Darwin, and it was always to be expected that his saleroom profile might be high in 2009.

Despite riding the crest of a wave of popularity, Theodore Roosevelt declined to run again for the presidency in 1908. Instead he anointed William Howard Taft as his successor and famously embarked upon a year of big game hunting in Africa.