The back room is where they cut open the dead animals, and the front room is where they sell them. They choose the creatures carefully, dealing only in what is legal and authentic. Working as their ancestors would, they make sure to use every part of the animal.
They are not butchers.
They are not burly men mounting the spoils of a hunting expedition on plaques for a man cave.
They’re hipsters, 20- and 30-somethings with art backgrounds and thick-rimmed glasses and — “I hate the H-word,” one of them says.
“I mean, it’s really getting to be a slur, because it’s so broad. Like, what does that mean?” the 27-year-old Greg Hatem continues, standing in his Baltimore storefront. “There are all kinds of people doing what we do.”
What they do — and in this case, what they sell — is “rogue taxidermy.” (...)
Call it hipster or call it art, rogue taxidermy’s popularity in New York and London is making its way to other urban locations in the United States, where young and creative people have taken to reinventing the centuries-old process of removing and rearranging the skin of a dead animal.
Rogue taxidermy is about a decade old. The New York Times wrote about Marbury and his fellow rogue taxidermy pioneers in 2005, calling their work “absurdly gory” and “aggressively weird.” Marbury thought his run of cool might be over that year, with national media attention and, tragically, a few plastic versions of animal mounts being sold at Urban Outfitters. But a post-recession surge of do-it-yourself enthusiasm has launched rogue taxidermy onto Etsy, Pinterest and Instagram. There are goat heads turned into wedding hairpieces, mice with mohawks and leather jackets, and deer with golden Gucci symbols for antlers.
Bazaar, the oddities shop in Baltimore that Hatem owns with partner Brian Henry, regularly hosts taxidermy classes. A recent session sold out in less than 20 minutes. Although the instructors typically come from New York, the students — mostly 20- to 35-year-old women — come from Washington and Baltimore.
In a class on making a winged guinea pig, taxidermy novice Miranda Beck was thrilled to find an opportunity for formal instruction after years of trying to figure it out herself. She added the flying guinea pig, which she named Clarence, to a collection that included her first piece of taxidermy, a fox named Zelda. The 37-year-old aesthetician has since mummified a friend’s ferret, taxidermied a mole to dress him like Hamlet and started a small business selling Christmas ornaments made of deer bones. She works on her dining room table.
by Jessica Contrera, Washington Post | Read more:
Image: uncredited
They are not butchers.They are not burly men mounting the spoils of a hunting expedition on plaques for a man cave.
They’re hipsters, 20- and 30-somethings with art backgrounds and thick-rimmed glasses and — “I hate the H-word,” one of them says.
“I mean, it’s really getting to be a slur, because it’s so broad. Like, what does that mean?” the 27-year-old Greg Hatem continues, standing in his Baltimore storefront. “There are all kinds of people doing what we do.”
What they do — and in this case, what they sell — is “rogue taxidermy.” (...)
Call it hipster or call it art, rogue taxidermy’s popularity in New York and London is making its way to other urban locations in the United States, where young and creative people have taken to reinventing the centuries-old process of removing and rearranging the skin of a dead animal.
Rogue taxidermy is about a decade old. The New York Times wrote about Marbury and his fellow rogue taxidermy pioneers in 2005, calling their work “absurdly gory” and “aggressively weird.” Marbury thought his run of cool might be over that year, with national media attention and, tragically, a few plastic versions of animal mounts being sold at Urban Outfitters. But a post-recession surge of do-it-yourself enthusiasm has launched rogue taxidermy onto Etsy, Pinterest and Instagram. There are goat heads turned into wedding hairpieces, mice with mohawks and leather jackets, and deer with golden Gucci symbols for antlers.
Bazaar, the oddities shop in Baltimore that Hatem owns with partner Brian Henry, regularly hosts taxidermy classes. A recent session sold out in less than 20 minutes. Although the instructors typically come from New York, the students — mostly 20- to 35-year-old women — come from Washington and Baltimore.
In a class on making a winged guinea pig, taxidermy novice Miranda Beck was thrilled to find an opportunity for formal instruction after years of trying to figure it out herself. She added the flying guinea pig, which she named Clarence, to a collection that included her first piece of taxidermy, a fox named Zelda. The 37-year-old aesthetician has since mummified a friend’s ferret, taxidermied a mole to dress him like Hamlet and started a small business selling Christmas ornaments made of deer bones. She works on her dining room table.
by Jessica Contrera, Washington Post | Read more:
Image: uncredited
