The sportsman's handbook to collecting, preserving, and setting-up trophies & specimens : together with a guide to the hunting grounds of the world / by Rowland Ward.

  • Ward, Rowland, 1848?-1912.
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The sportsman's handbook to collecting, preserving, and setting-up trophies & specimens : together with a guide to the hunting grounds of the world / by Rowland Ward. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    140/348 (page 108)
    ARTISTIC SETTING-UP OF TROPHIES In order to reproduce the life-like form of any animal by the perpetuation of its natural features, not only technical skill, but knowledge and artistic feeling are necessary to the production of a satisfactory result. Formerly, the process aptly termed “ stuffing ” was employed. The results were seldom or never of a very high value, especially in the case of mammals. The fact was too often ignored that the use of astringents, necessary to preserve a skin, invariably distorts it, and that this distortion differs even in several parts of the same skin, by reason of the varying thickness or even the condition of health in which the animal was killed. The skin of a fat animal is, for instance, liable to undue expansion, that of a poor beast, to peculiar contraction ; and mere stuffing can give only an untrue representation of the living creature. It is therefore incumbent upon the operator, firstly, to make himself thoroughly acquainted with the habits of the animal in a state of nature ; and next to choose some incident of the crea- ture’s living existence which he desires his specimen to illustrate. This will enable him to arrive at his design. He must then make himself acquainted not only with the bony, but also with the muscular structure of the animal; and by the aid of such knowledge he may, if he have the requisite technical and artistic skill, pro- duce a model, whereon may be placed the skin and