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The Final Indignity
In 2011 Italy’s Armin Blasbichler Studio ruffled some feathers within the design world when it produced the Orson collection — a series of tables that took taxidermy as its primary material (dead deer, sheep and pigs, to be precise). However, as the vintage images here demonstrate, the Victorians had embraced the idea with characteristically gruesome panache over a century earlier, at a time when Man’s inhumane treatment of Animal reached new heights.
First published in an 1896 edition of London’s The Strand Magazine, author William G. Fitzgerald introduced a myriad spread of imperial souvenirs across an eight-page article entitled “Animal Furniture”, including a bear shot by the then-Prince of Wales which was reincarnated as a (very) dumb waiter; the Princess of Wales’ favourite parrot given new purpose as a fruit and flower stand, and (how appropriate) a man-eating tiger armchair, belonging to a member of the Civil Service.
Given that Fitzgerald describes the process of turning such beasts into “articles of furniture and general utility” as both “ingenious and praiseworthy” one can’t help but wonder about the fate of “Punch”, the very-much-alive little Highland Terrier pictured sitting on a chair which had been, once upon a time, a baby giraffe. If you’re still curious, take a seat and read much more on the Victorian “nose-to-tail seating” phenomenon in this blog article! p (fs)
Photographs courtesy University of Sheffield Library.
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»I don’t mistrust reality of which I hardly know anything. I just mistrust the picture of it that our senses deliver.«
Gerhard Richter
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