Abstract
This thesis tracks the flow of animal skins that supplied taxidermy production in the long nineteenth century in Britain and the British Empire. It explores the embodied, material creation of taxidermy – the meeting of animal and human skin – and reveals how taxidermy was a dynamic process. It proposes that dead animal bodies and body parts could still influence human thought and action. Taxidermy was intended to keep an animal skin secured and preserved for the future, and contemporary scholarship has similarly associated taxidermy with timelessness and perpetuity. Instead, this thesis argues that taxidermy was never something that could be entirely stilled, just as it could never be said to be fully completed. It explores the temporalities bound to the slowing and quickening of the skin and mount, of preservation, decay, return and repetition, and conceptualises an idea of taxidermy time.Focussing on the period between 1820 and 1914, each chapter explores a place and a process in the taxidermy journey: skinning in the colonial hunting field, preservation and transportation, taxidermy as a hand craft, the influence of Victorian exhibitions on taxidermic technique, and museum display. It explores the skin lives of creatures to demonstrate how animal matter shaped history. This thesis draws on four case study museums and their archives: the Royal Albert Memorial Museum (Exeter), the National Museum of Wales (Cardiff), Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, and the hunter Charles Peel’s museum in Oxford. Primary material, such as the writings of nineteenth century hunters, taxidermists, and curators, has also provided valuable insight into the multispecies agents and environmental interactions that shaped taxidermy, from bacteria and moths, to scavenging vultures and human hands.
| Date of Award | 2 Dec 2021 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | Peter A Coates (Supervisor) & Bryony Onciul (Supervisor) |