 Hi everyone. We're going to have a really interesting webinar today on taxidermy. So I'll just give my usual introductions and then we'll start. If you have any questions during the webinar please put them in the chat box and I'll make sure they get answered. These are our next two webinars that are coming up in October. We're having one on insurance and one on marking and labeling collections. So you can sign up for those. Just go to the website. If you don't see them in the slide or on the website they're in the calendar and they're all free. And we're also doing a survey. So if you haven't gotten an email to request you to participate in the survey you can go to the website and go to this tab in the slider and it'll take you to the survey. The survey is really important because we're trying to figure out what you want and also how to keep this program going. And we also have the discussion group. So if you're a registered member of the Connecting to Collections Care which is really easy. It doesn't cost anything. You can ask questions. If you're not registered you can read everything in the questions. But if you need a question answered please we're available. They're conservators and historic preservation professionals that are looking over making sure the questions get answered. So there's that. If you can go to the community website. You can like us on Facebook. You can follow us on Twitter. And if you need to contact me this is my email address. And so I guess without further ado we'll get started. Our speakers today are Eugene Miller and George Dante and I'll let them introduce themselves. Okay. Okay. Hello. Good afternoon or morning depending where you are. I'm Eugene Miller and I am an objects conservator and private practice and I'm going to be doing sort of the conservation side with working with George Dante who is a master taxidermist and you'll be hearing from him in a little bit. I'm just going to get started. You can check my bio out in the description so because we have a lot to cover. So can I, I'm sorry I'm not able to proceed Susan. You're fine. Go ahead. Got it. Okay. So who has taxidermy? Well, all sorts of collecting institutions have taxidermy. Your specimens may be. Numerous and directly tied to your educational mission such as in a science or nature museum or a zoological collection or even a children's museum or it may be. It may be that your specimens tell only part of a larger story such as in a historic home. In the image at left we see two taxidermy head mounts flanking the fireplace in the front hall of Westbury House in Long Island, New York. Pretty typical of a historic home or perhaps you just have a one-off piece such as at right you see that little guy up there who's actually not little. He's very large. It's a taxidermy monitor lizard who's hung vertically as if he's scaling the wall and that forms part of a contemporary piece by Mario Mertz which was on display at the Des Moines Art Center. I'm going to stop right now because we'd like to ask you all some questions right off the bat just to get a feel for our audience and the scope of your own collection. So Susan, if you could pull up question one, you've pulled that up and then followed by two and three. So question one is about what type of institution you're affiliated with. And then we want to know what your role is in question number two and how large your taxidermy collection is. So that's great. Thank you for answering. So I seem to have a lot of natural history people and some local history I see coming up and historic homes as well. And mostly collections. Karen, we have a few conservators on here too. So glad you're joining us. And great. Thank you. Okay. So regardless of the type of institution you're coming from, you really want to know the basics of how taxidermy is prepared and how it deteriorates in order to be able to take care of it. So I'm going to continue with my next slide here. So what is taxidermy? I mean really basically what we're talking about here is taxidermy specimens, mounted stuffed animals. They may be full body mounts, head and shoulder mounts, small mammals, birds, reptiles you name it. And then there's also study skins to consider, which are skins of animals that are not mounted. Hunters sometimes use the term trophy mounts when referring to the full shoulder or head and nail mounts, but today we're really going to focus on the individual specimens. But much of what we say will hold true for study skins and mounted material found within dioramas. So in the study skins at the lower right you see some birds in storage in a drawer. So as we said, you know, we're talking a little bit about dioramas, but one or more of these types of specimen is used to create what we call a habitat diorama. The example left is quite large, room sized, but smaller groupings in vitrines as seen on the right are also common. This is a grouping from a commercial proprietor of historic taxidermy. Depending on the date and origin dioramas may contain preserved dried plant materials or replicas created by artists or a combination of the two. So what left is the African buffalo diorama at the American Museum of History in New York. These dioramas, which were created by a team of scientists, naturalists and extremely skilled artisans, really represent the apex of this genre. They very sensitively recreate a particular moment in time and location. However, from the earliest attempts at taxidermy style preservation, which date to 16th century Europe to its heyday in the late 19th and early 20th century, taxidermy was practiced far and wide across the land in Europe and the US. So you really had taxidermists of varying skill and ability practicing their craft, and it was really a thriving cottage industry much beyond the institutional halls. And I'm sure you all see this reflected in your specimens, and George will talk more about this later. But once again, inquiring minds want to know, and I'm going to ask Susan to just highlight poll questions four and five. We're curious what type of specimens you have in your collection and whether or not they're part of a diorama. So for the most part, it seems like you have so far we're seeing people with specimens that are not part of a diorama. And a mixture of animals, birds, mammals, and a mix. Okay. Thank you. So taxidermy mounts are what we call, as conservatives, composite objects. They're really composed primarily of organic materials or materials that were once living and have been treated chemically to preserve them in varying ways. So treated more or less. We'll hear more about that too. The mounts also include numerous adhesives, coatings, paint, inorganic additions such as plaster, glass, fasteners, and eyes. When thinking about handling, storage, and display of these items, because they are composite, you really have to consider the most sensitive of the components. And like the organic materials would include collagen and keratin in the skin and leather, keratin in the feather, hair, horn, and nail, claws, and hooves, bone, which is when the skulls are included and that will have inorganic and organic components, chitin, which would be for insect and crustacean exoskeletons. And you also might find wood present within the inner armatures and forms. Inorganic materials that are often present, as I said, are glass, iron in terms of the fasteners, other metals, lead armatures are very common. So just as an overview of what we're going to be covering today, I first want to say this is a very huge topic and a relatively short amount of time to do it. We hope to provide some useful information, but it certainly won't be exhaustive, but we really do want your feedback. So we are going to keep barraging you with these poll questions about the topics, but thank you for so far you've been great answering them. And I'm going to turn over to George in a minute, our master taxidermist, and he's going to begin by talking a little bit about the technology of taxidermy and some changes and variations in the practice that occurred throughout history, preserving these animals. Also, some things that are really kind of cool that you might learn from looking really closely at your specimen. And after that, we'll address the common types of damage and deterioration we see in these mounts and their causes and some suggestions to reduce them. And then finally, George and I will discuss treatment options and discuss some of the differences between a conservation approach and what you might get by a taxidermist who would be doing restoration of your taxidermy. So, George. Hi everyone. Thanks for having me today. So, first we're going to talk about the difference in materials and the methods of taxidermy. Throughout history, basically, we saw that taxidermy from birds to mammals to fish were sometimes done with very similar materials based on the popular materials that were available at that time period. So, I'm going to introduce you to a few different types of terminology that we as taxidermists would use that may not be used by conservators or museum professionals. So, I hope to kind of illustrate that for you. First we're going to talk about conventional taxidermy. When we say conventional taxidermy, we're basically discussing preserved skin fit over an armature. And this is the most common taxidermy that you're going to see in your pieces in your collection. How can we tell the difference? That is a great question everyone always asks. It's usually a generally good solid body shape to the piece. It usually has decent anatomy. It's a very solid structure. And we do what we call a tap test. We can actually just slightly tap the side of the animal and kind of listen to it. And with experience, you can tell by that sound what kind of body is inside, if it's solid, if it's maché, if it's paper. And we also have what we call a pin test. We will take a very sharp pin and basically insert it into the animal at a location. And we can tell by the resistance of that pin what type of mannequin is on the inside. The other method we're going to look at is loose fill taxidermy. Loose fill is a very old method of taxidermy and it is actually still carried out and done today. What it talks about is basically a preserved skin that's filled with a loose material. It may have a very crude armature on the inside of wire. It may have some natural skeletal elements, but it's basically filled with rags, sawdust, chop, sisal. It's usually pretty easy to tell these pieces because they always seem to have a very stuffed, overfilled appearance. The anatomy is usually very poor. They are very susceptible to severe cracking because there's really nothing that that skin is glued to. Nothing holding it in place, so you'll have a severe crack and you'll start to see loose material coming out of the piece. That's usually the greatest sign right there. If you start to see a pile of sawdust, a pile of material underneath the piece, it's usually a loose filled piece. This was primarily done with snakes. A lot of lizards were done this way because at that time period it was the best way to do them. The next procedure we'll look at is models. We're not going to get too far into models today because it really isn't traditional taxidermy. But reptiles and fish were notorious for being done as models because it was a more accurate way of doing them. Molds were made of the specimens. Positives were cast then in plaster, wax, fiberglass, and certain plastics. You can usually tell these because they're better than any of your taxidermy. The models on these smaller amphibians were usually very, very well done. You'll see very little appearance or no appearance of seams where the animal has been stitched up. You'll see no shrinkage, very little damage from age because these usually held up very well. And if you touch them, if you do a little pin test, you'll of course be able to sink it in. If it's a wax piece, it'll be very hard if it was a newer resin piece. The celluloid method is another method we're not going to get into too much today because it's just a huge offshoot of taxidermy. And it's where the specimen was molded and cast and then integral colored. It is a branch of mold making, but it's also a branch of taxidermy because it was used in later times as trying to find a better way to preserve primates. Animals with facial features and it would actually make a mold, allow the specimen to macerate inside the mold and then fill it with celluloid. So we're not going to get into that and I'm sure most people are not going to encounter them very often. The last method we're going to talk about is freeze dry. Freeze dry was a very popular process and became very popular at a time period. And it's sometimes very difficult to tell the difference in ease. Freeze drying usually has a specimen that looks very good. The anatomy is very decent on the piece because there's no mannequin on the inside. Everything of the animal is usually intact aside from the internal organs. You can give them a pin test, you can insert a pin. You'll see a good amount of resistance, but the flesh inside does turn to a foamy texture. So you will be able to insert a pin to it. They, especially if you have a piece that has an open mouth or nose that look incredibly realistic, these are usually freeze dried pieces. It's a very hard body, very solid body. So if we go to the next slide, we're going to start with preparation techniques. So in the beginnings, we must start with preparing the skin. Preparing the skin involved a preservative. There are several different preservatives that were used over time and that are still used today. First we'll start out with a pickle. Now a pickle basically describes a method of soaking the skin in an acid, an alcohol, or an alum solution. And it was a very quick method. It was done a lot on smaller specimens and still used through time today. The second would be a dry preservative. This is a method where the skin would be removed from the animal and a dry powder would be rubbed on the skin to preserve it. And that's all that was used. We saw things in birds where arsenic powder would be rubbed on the skin, dusted in through the feathers. One smaller mammal later in history, borax, was a huge dry preservative. The other thing about dry preservatives is they became proprietary mixes. Each studio started to develop their own formulas of dry preservatives. So that's where we run into issues where we may not really know what is in there. The tanning is the most tried and true process. This is the best way to preserve a skin and it involved the acid pickle, oiling of the skin, shaving, etc. A true tanned hide was going to be your most stable skin. We have the freeze dry after that. In the freeze dry piece there is no preservation of the skin. So again the animal was just eviscerated and pumped up a little bit and put into a freeze dry machine. So we don't see very many chemicals used at all through history in freeze dry pieces for preserving the skin itself. Taxidermists traditionally used bug-proofing agents. From the beginning infestations were always a problem. So in addition to the preserving of the skin, taxidermists would usually add something else to the skin to help bug-proof it. We see arsenic soap being applied to the inside of a tanned skin, borax being dusted on a skin. Solutions were made of borax and that were painted on the inside of the skin. Arsenic powder was dusted over skins, especially birds. Individual formulas were also created for this. Again we see people in their own studios trying to improve upon these methods and coming up with their own formulas. The pros and cons, there were many. They all have their own different pros and cons. Out of all of these the most stable is a tanned skin. If you have a piece that's in great condition and it's lasting it's probably a tanned skin. So now we'll move into the mounting of the specimen. If we go to the next slide we'll start with our quote-unquote mannequins. First we'll start out with the stuffing or loose fill method. So the stuffing and loose fill started very, very early and I see one of our questions here by Matt is asking about that. Loose fill started in the very beginning. As a matter of fact one of the first pieces of taxidermy was a mounted rhinoceros that was literally the skin was filled with gravel. So loose fill started very, very early and it was very crude. Basically a simple wire armature was made on the inside. Again parts of the skeleton, the skull were used and the skin was sewn back. The incisions were sewn as the taxidermis filled the specimen cavity. So if you can imagine taking a leg of an animal you would make several stitches, fill the leg. Make several more stitches, fill the leg. So you're essentially back filling this animal until you've sewed every incision up and have this stuffed piece. The taxidermis would then bend it, shape it into position and crudely shape the anatomy into it. Most of these pieces looked very overfilled and very unnatural. Some of them were well done but most of them were very unnatural pieces and caused a lot of problems. The second technique we'll look at would be wrapped forms and that's what our slides are illustrating here today. If we look we have some great images of Comanche here. A wrapped form typically started out on a large mammal with a center board or a crude wood armature that would take up the body mass of the animal. We see the skeletal elements that are cleaned and not cleaned very well. They were basically just roughly flushed out. They would drive them, set into place for the legs. You see the skull attached to the armature wire and then wood was used to further fill out the animal, bulk it out basically and then the material was wrapped over that armature. Now the material was sysil or wood wool and it's a very loose material that kind of has the consistency of steel wool but usually a plant product. This was done very well by some taxidermists. Through history it was perfected and in the upper right hand corner there we see William T. Hornaday actually wrapping a tiger mannequin there and Hornaday really perfected this technique. They would actually sew with a twine the musculature into these pieces. So they would create these elaborate muscle groups by actually sewing this excelsior together. The head of the animal was either the skull that was flushed out with excelsior over the top of it. It might have been carved out of balsa wood or it could have been cast off of the animal as form of a death mask out of plaster of Paris. There were many variations of it. Later in time taxidermists started covering these wrapped excelsior bodies with clay and then mache to further stabilize them and make them a little stronger. Next we have carved wood bodies. This was a small offshoot. We saw this mainly for small animals that were very, very tiny. We look at chipmunks, mice where taxidermists would actually take a small piece of balsa wood and completely carve the animal out of this material and then wrap the legs. So you'd have a balsa wood core that would basically encompass the head, encompass the body, and then the legs were wrapped just like we see here. Even in birds, birds were notorious for being wrapped bodies as you'll see down at the bottom. The bottom slide is a small bird mannequin and where for bird anatomy it was very easy just to take a small water. This excelsior wrap it up and the same for the neck. As you can see, there were several different grades of excelsior. Much more coarse material was used for the body and the neck was a finer material so they can get a little bit more delicate with it. And finally after this we come to Carl Eakley's method and the next slide will illustrate Eakley's method of doing a mannequin. Now Carl Eakley felt that everything we've seen done to this point was not good enough. We needed a more accurate way of mounting animals and Carl developed this process of either using the center board like we see here in this gazelle or rearticulating the entire skeleton of the animal. Over that skeleton or this armature he would start to put oil-based clay and basically start this wonderful sculpture of the animal's anatomy and these were really beautiful pieces. Once the anatomy was as close to the animal as he could get, he would test fit the skin several times and then finally make a mold of that piece. So in the last slide you'll see there in the lower right-hand corner, that is a plaster mold made over the top of that clay sculpture. The mold was separated and the mold was archived. You had this mold that they would use. The clay sculpture was then discarded. The clay was used again and the mold was kept. Inside that mold we see several different products being used over time. The molds were first started out of being used. They were doing a mache material to make their mannequin. So mache was used. Different materials were used to reinforce the mache and then we moved quickly to plaster and burlap. Plaster is made in a slurry burlap. It is put into this almost like a paper mache process. So the plaster and burlap is laminated inside these molds to create this very hard mannequin. After plaster and burlap, taxidermis started to move over to paper. Paper was lighter. It was a little bit more durable as far as staining falls. It was more cost effective. Laminated paper was laid into these molds and used to create the mannequins. After paper we see different materials being used and we will illustrate some of these in a bit. If we go to our next slide you will see some different materials here. In the upper left hand corner those two mannequins there are actually plaster and burlap. Those are James L. Clark mannequins. You can usually tell a plaster and burlap mannequin by the weight of it. If you are lifting or moving your taxidermy around at all you can usually tell right away because they are very very heavy. They are still hollow inside but they are quite heavy because of the material. If you have any cracks or separations in your skin you can usually look inside with a small light and you will usually see that burlap exposed and that is a great indication. Below that photo you will see the paper. Paper mannequins were laminated rosin paper using different glues. Common practice was to seal the paper mannequin with an orange shellac to basically waterproof it and give the hide glue a good surface to bond to. In the upper right hand corner I have a couple wood mannequins here. Through history taxidermists would basically make a mannequin out of anything they possibly could. Although we can guess on what is inside of these pieces sometimes you never know. There was a company in New England through several years were doing nothing but mounting every one of their heads on hand carved wood mannequins. If you look at these you will see how elaborate they are put together. They are using skeletal elements in there. They are using some excelsior to fill out flesh out them. So sometimes we really don't know what is inside until we poke around a little deeper. In the bottom you will see that bare rug shell there is fiberglass. There was a period in time where some taxidermists were making their molds and playing around with fiberglass. When fiberglass first came on the scene after World War II taxidermists said we need to find something that is more durable especially for items like bare rugs. Where these rugs would be abused on the floor and moved around and stepped on. So a lot of taxidermists started to make their own out of fiberglass in efforts to create a stronger more durable piece. The next slide. So we are going to move into the eyes. Some portions of the animal are not preserved. Some pieces are recreated in other materials and no better elements to talk about than the eyes. So the eyes of the piece are very very interesting. Sometimes they can tell us how old the piece is. They can tell us the quality of the piece of the efforts that went into it. The earliest forms of eyes were hand blown eyes or hand shaped eyes out of glass. And you can see in the lower left hand corner there is a great example of some older eyes. They were painted several different ways, several different styles. Some taxidermy studios painted their own eyes. They had their own methods of painting them, their own paint schedules. So they vary quite a bit. They are usually a very shallow dome. If you look at them from the side, their profile is very very shallow, almost button like. Later after these older eyes we see a more higher profile eye. It's almost a higher dome. They were starting to make these out of molds. So it would actually pour the molten glass inside of a mold. Press it together where you'll see, as I'm holding it there, you'll see the hollow back of these eyes. And again, they started updating their painting processes, but you'll see several different types of paints. They started to offer eyes in different price qualities. So you'll see that one label cheap there is basically very impressionistic as far as the veining inside the eyes. The mid-range had a little softer veining when they started using airbrushes. They really toyed around with getting these as accurate as they can. And then the last one, the higher end eyes, they started offering these eyes with blue glints in them. At some point in history they started to feel that most of these luminates had a blue glint to their pupil, and they actually started creating that in these eyes. So we could actually kind of date these pieces if we see these eyes in there. All the way over on the right we see whites in the eyes. And this is interesting because a lot of people ask us, if your piece has whites in the eyes, does that mean it's a more contemporary piece? Is it more modern? And the answer is no. There was a time in history, and these are very old eyes, where taxidermists wanted to create that white in the eye or the slara. And they were actually hand-making these eyes with little bits of white glass on the end to create that white in the eye. Very beautiful eye, and it was way ahead of its time. So we'll then talk about some of the more modern eyes today. So if you have any taxidermy today that you're looking at, you can usually tell the day to the piece right away by the style of the eyes if you look at these. Modern eyes today have come so far, whereas the eyes are actually created for individual species, and multiple styles are created for each species. The good quality eyes have the whites in the slara around them. The modern eye, as you can see, the corneal bulge will be corrected and the slara will be corrected in the vascular detail. But what's interesting about this is there were certain studios that created wonderful eyes. If you look at this example here, this is an eye of an African elephant that was mounted by Roland Ward in 1907. And if you look at this eye, it is actually better than some of the elephant eyes sold today. So at that time period, they made a very beautiful piece of glass, a good crystal, and painted it wonderfully where it even has the slara, all the vascular detail, really beautiful eyes. So sometimes it could be very confusing. So aside from the eyes, we'll quickly move over to the ears of the piece. So in the next slide, you'll see here the ears were done several different ways. We first see ears being done with no liner inside them at all. And when I talk about an ear liner here today, we're talking about a material inside the animal's ear. That is between the back ear skin and the front ear skin. That's sandwiched between these two pieces of skin that allows the ear to hold its shape in a natural form. Very early on, no ear liners were used at all. The ears were left to kind of dry, shrivel up on their own. Then they started using sheet lead. Sheet lead kind of revolutionized the way taxidermis preserved the ears. It was a great material for creating these elaborate shapes. And as you can see here, these are two separate ear liners. The one on the right, a very crude lead ear. The one on the left, a very, very nicely done lead ear. So it varied depending on the skill of the taxidermist. So the lead ears were wonderful. If you see, there's actually score marks on that ear. The better one has the score marks where the taxidermist knew he wanted to rough up that surface. So whatever glues he used had something to bite to. There's also an ear butt or the muscle of the butt actually sculpted on there in paper mache. Wonderful advancements. And these are not far from time periods. These are actually very close. What we're looking at is literally just a difference between a skilled taxidermist and an unskilled taxidermist. After lead ear liners kind of went out of fashion, taxidermists were looking for a cheaper, quicker material to use, and many of them went over to paper. Just like the paper mannequins were used, they would make a mold of an ear and actually laminate paper over that mold. And again it was usually a rosin paper that was laminated with some sort of glue. It might have been a dextrin paste and these paper ear liners were inserted into the years of the specimens. After paper, taxidermists started using salastic material. Salastic was a plastic material that was submerged in acetone and then the taxidermist could shape it with his hands, lay it over one of these molds and create the ear shape with this that was inserted and glued into the ear. After salastics, we see taxidermists now start to get into molding and casting ears, heat form plastics, and then later machets, epoxies, and polyester resins. So as we get later in time, it's actually harder to figure out what's inside the ears because oddly enough contemporary times taxidermists are using more materials inside their ears than ever before. Next. Okay. All right. Well, I'm just going to jump in here for a bit and talk about how some of these techniques and materials affect what we're seeing now. This is sort of an introduction to our deterioration section, but I have inherent advice up here and some of you may be familiar with this term, but conservators use it to describe problems arising from qualities of a material that are part of the object or inherent to it, which will inevitably lead to its deterioration. So this can be due to problematic combinations or materials that behave differently under the same conditions or to poor quality materials to begin with. And it should be noted that we've been talking about the materials and methods used in the taxidermy, but that those materials used in the preparation really will have an effect on the specimen and its current condition you're seeing now. So a poorly mounted specimen from any period is going to have more problems than one that was made by a skilled craftsperson, but some of these materials have common problems such as curled split ears. These are pretty ubiquitous, right, George, among the historic mounts? They are. They are. If you look at the eye there, most of the eyes in these specimens were set in a plaster or a mache material, very hard material, and then later in water-based clay. And what would happen is we see that the mannequins were very smooth in their section of the eye socket. This material would be set in place. The eye, the glass eye would be set into that. And if the skin would start to delaminate and pull away from the form, you'd have this whole section actually break free and start to rattle around inside there. So this was a common problem, and this is why, because of the way this was created. Same thing with the ears. The ears are always an area where the damage is easily occurred by moving these pieces around. And the lead ear is soft, so if you bang it, the ear skin is delicate. You're going to crack the ear and the lead skin to bend. The nice thing about these is that the lead ears can be repositioned. I don't think there's any material today that is used that you can do this with. The beauty of it is you can actually reposition that ear back into a correct position. Unfortunately, you're not going to have to deal with the skin that's cracked all around it, but the ear can be salvaged. We also see many, many problems when dealing with inherent vice. If we look at this piece, it's a great example for many situations. So we look at this caribou head. We first look at the animal overall and wonder about the tan. Was it a poorly tanned hide? Might it be a pickle where the hide got wet? Did it get insect damage? What is actually happening here? We look at it and you could see large amounts of area where the hair is missing. And we'd have to kind of go back and kind of figure out what exactly is going on here. Right away we can see it's a plaster and burlap form. You could see the pieces of burlap there. You could see the plaster. These animals, when they would fall, when they would get damaged and bumped, that plaster would crack and it could be disastrous. They were extremely heavy and difficult to move around. The ear, if you look at it closely, appears to be curled again without physically inspecting this. It's difficult to tell, but when an ear curls up that bad and is really shriveled, we assume that there's no liner inside that. Because if it's a lead liner, it'll bend a little bit, but it'll have a solid base behind it. If you see ears that are really curled out of position without being broken or terribly shredded, then there's usually no liner inside that ear. Okay. So now we're really going to move on to some specific threats to your taxidermy. But Susan, could you pull up question number six, please? We're going to talk about damage that we've seen and we want to hear what kinds of damage you've seen. So that's what question six is about. Yeah. Splits and cracks, loss of hair, for sure. Oh, yeah. George, did you want to talk about the loss of hair on that caribou? Did I rush you? Or you could talk about that. No. We can talk about that later. That's fine. Okay. Yeah, we have other opportunities. Okay. So everybody's seeing it all. Yeah. Pest damage, splits and cracks. Yeah. Well, the slide up here is showing you from the CCI, the Canadian Conservation Institute has long promoted a holistic approach to preventive conservation, and they have outlined these 10 agents of deterioration that affect museum and archives. So we find it helpful to go through these and sort of show how they will affect your taxidermy. A particular concern are incorrect light levels infestation by museum pests, physical damage from improper handling, and disaster, fire, blood, and all of these will affect your specimens, and you've seen the problems there. And we're going to talk about common problems from each agent. So the first agent we have up here is custodial neglect or disassociation, and this occurs when information becomes separated from the specimen. If you have unidentified items of unknown origin, unknown species, without accession or catalog information, they would fall under this category. Some of this can be remedied. Animals can be identified and roughly dated, possibly based on some of these techniques we've learned about. Items in a questionable storage situation, such as this head mount, which is stored in a cellar among garden furniture, doors, cast off items, and only identified by this plaque could be moved and rehoused, and should be. Sometimes though we have a good success story. In a historic home you might be able to find receipts or other archival information about the acquisition, such as with the case with this tiger mount, which turned out to be, you know, had actually been suggested that it was probably a Roland Ward piece from its look. And then they actually found the documentation when they looked further and were able to connect that with the specimen. So this is from the Westbury House in Long Island. And we're going to ask you another question. Susan, if you could pull up poll question number seven. Do you all know the history and origin of your mounts, or might you have situations where you have questions about them? So it seems like it's coming out maybe for the most part to know the majority. There are some questions about the history and origin. So hopefully you'll be able to investigate that further with a little bit of information we're sharing today. So I'm going to move on to physical forces, which are certainly another threat to taxidermy as George has mentioned. The blows and strikes that can damage the fragile parts, the ears, the different appendages. But we also have to remember the force that's working on us all as the years go by, which is gravity. This was the specimen that we saw climbing up the wall in one of those opening slides I had. Harold, as he's affectionately known, was hung vertically from the wall and he was hung from the metal rings on his feet, which you see one at the upper right. As his comment for the reptile mounts, he was filled with a kind of, you know, red, just loose film material, which if you see in the lower left, he was shipped in a crate and when it arrived that material was just all over. It had fallen from the crack that you see on the lower right side in his tail, which went like pretty much three-quarters of the circumference of the tail. The original stitching had become somewhat deteriorated, but the new crack had formed because really the method that he was hanging from and didn't adequately support the lower body or the tail with all of that film material had begun to crack and sag under its own weight. So the most important part of this treatment, really, besides stabilizing the crack, was creating a specialized mount to properly support this animal. So I just, I'm really sorry I don't have a picture of the mount, but it went really pretty far down under the tail and then it supported each of the limbs, kind of in a U-shape underneath and it was a museum flat stock mount that was painted out to match the animal. But I just really, the important thing here is that if you have hanging mounts in your institution, particularly in a home, a historic home where you might have heavy items that really have just been there for some time and haven't been checked, you really should check to make sure that they're supporting the weight of the specimen because as we know, mounts haven't always been of the same quality and design as they should be or as they are now. George, do you want to talk about these? Sure, birds are very susceptible to damage and we see this all the time from moving and handling to just the storage. We get a lot of birds that come in that are literally stored in these small boxes and they're trying to pack so many inside there that they get damaged. Very, very common problems. The heads, yep, the head is often the first to go, unfortunately. The head of a bird usually has the real skull inside of it and as you can see, there's usually just a small piece of wire protruding into that. So it's got a lot of weight, it's kind of unbalanced. So when these are really jarred around, the head is usually the first thing to go. The poor woodpecker there is really roughed up as far as his feathers and this could be damage that cannot be reversible. So birds really need a lot of care. So how should you handle and store your collections? Let's talk about some tips for handling taxidermy. Some of these will be familiar to you from dealing with other types of collection items. It's always good practice to inspect for areas of weakness or damage before moving or lifting a specimen. Smaller, lightweight, upright mounts should be handled by the base whenever possible. Avoid handling feathers and fur and be aware that hollow-haired mounts will be especially vulnerable to loss. For example, we can see a moose here. Never handle a moose by the bell, which is underneath the neck there. For heavier, unwieldy head and shoulder mounts such as the one here, without a backing board, always use the buddy system and lift from the stable base of the horns or antlers and the muzzle if necessary. Now, this particular tip may seem counter-intuitive as conservators will typically tell you not to lift objects from appendages or handles but if you remember from George's section on technology that a multitude of materials were utilized for mannequins, these will really vary in weight and structural strength. Further, we learned about the degree of tannage and objects condition and how that will influence the stability of the mount. Taxidermists recommend lifting from the horns or antlers because mounting techniques favor keeping these in place along a strong central armature element. The rack is the most important to the taxidermist, really in their practice, and this is where he or she will focus the structural strength of the piece. So, you know, you should definitely check and make sure there's no delamination and they're not loose before you start doing that. But, you know, this is something that George, that I found interesting as a conservator because that would not necessarily be our first recommendation if you didn't have that knowledge, the taxidermists. And before we leave the subject of handling, I'd like to note some precautions that should be taken when handling and working with historic taxidermy. As you've heard from George, arsenic, and also mercury compounds were routinely used as pesticides in the 19th to mid-20th century taxidermy, and tanskins will frequently contain residues. Further, the taxidermy was often retreated with other pesticide compounds, which are dangerous to human health. As the pesticide formulations changed over time, also the application methods changed. Common techniques included dipping, spraying, aerosol bombing, misting, fumigation, you name it. So objects might have been completely filled or covered with a compound arsenic or other compound over long periods of time. So if you have old specimens with no evidence whatsoever of insect activity, you can assume that this was treated probably pretty heavily with pesticides. The other things we've kind of heard some that lead paint, other heavy metal pigments were used in mount preparation. George mentioned lead earliners, and some taxidermy even has a plaster that might have asbestos within it, armatures that can be friable if they're disturbed. So we recommend personal protective equipment, including lead particulate masks and gloves when handling and cleaning taxidermy. And if you're working in depth, moving or cataloging numerous specimens, you could wear a lab coat, you could wash it separately, or you could wear a disposable Tyvek suit. And we have some information in the handout that will be the online forms that we'll be giving you about doing arsenic spot tests if you just want to try that. But I'm not going to talk too much about that right now. And I'm also briefly just going to mention materials for safe storage. I don't have a lot of details to give you right now because we don't have enough time, but you see at the bottom the stash website, which is wonderful. Check out AIC's storage website to learn more about basics on storage and safe materials. You can type taxidermy into the search button and find some cool examples, like the one at right, of how people have solved their taxidermy storage solutions. And also there's a link to a sort of older WAC article on storage methods for taxidermy specimens, which is still good, and that's available in our handout as well. For taxidermy, in terms of, you know, you've seen a lot of the results of incorrect temperature and relative humidity in terms of cracking and splitting. And so for taxidermy, we generally recommend the colder the better to avoid the accelerated agent inherent with higher temperatures. Temperature is also important as it's related to relative humidity because the mounts are composite objects that we've discussed and the skins are mounted under tension over the form. They're vulnerable to splitting and fluctuating environments. Gradual fluctuations, of course, will reduce the danger of splitting and cracking, but the fewer fluctuations, the better. Again, maintaining the RH under 65% is really important to prevent mold, but you also want to make sure it's not too dry that we'll, from what the drying and cracking again. So taxidermy specimens are artifacts that really do require a moderate and stable environment, ideally 40 to 55% RH. So in addition to those splits and cracks you see here on the slides, you can get a dulling of the glass eyes, you can get corrosion of the metal elements, you can see delamination in horn, tortoise shell, those kinds of things. You can see bloom sometimes and from fatty exudates on the skin themselves. And just as a note, taxidermy and dry collections should not be stored with wet or fluid preserved collections because of their differing environmental and safety needs. It becomes extremely brittle. Almost like parchment paper. And you'll see where it'll start to crack and separate away from the ear liner. Now that ear right there that I am holding is not really damaged. The ear liner itself is still intact. It has not been bent. That is just the skin shrinking and cracking around there. And it's actually been repaired once or twice through history. So we always see a lot of these pieces come in that have actually had fills done to them and repairs. And unfortunately, if they're not done correctly, they just keep degrading. You can see the bent ears of that elin right there. Very, very common what we see. All right. And pollutants is another agent of deterioration we want to mention. Many of the same pollutants that cause human health problems will also damage your animal specimens. The two types we worry most about are particulates and gases. The most problematic pollutant, I would say, which we see in our visits all the time, is simply dust, which contains abrasive particles, especially when the specimens are mounted in inaccessible areas like this at the upper right, which was on top of a very high cabinet you had to get to with a lift. Over time, if not removed, the dust can integrate with the surface of the porous materials as the pores expand and contract. And with the changes in the temperature and relative humidity, the dust can become adhered to finishes and coatings that which tend to soften at warm temperatures. And then another problem is that the dust has a large organic component with vegetable matters, skin and hair, which together are an excellent food source for pests. So regular housekeeping is really important. And then other concerns are the airborne contaminants and acidic gases, which can come from incorrect storage materials or exhibit materials. And you see on the lower left there's a yellowing glassine cover. You know, it's good to have your object covered, but not with an inappropriate material like that. It's really not doing any good for that bird underneath. So one of the most easily avoided types of damage, but which probably has already occurred to your specimens, is light damage. UV light is a particularly damaging part of the spectrum, and because it is not visible to the human eye, it can be removed with films or filters without affecting our viewing experience. Daylight and fluorescent lights are particularly high in UV. Visible light also causes damage and deterioration. This possum specimen here, I'm sorry, was exhibited on a windowsill, which is similar to the one you see at the upper right side. You can see in the top view and the two side views the difference between the exposed side and the unexposed side, which the unexposed side was probably faded as well, but not quite as bad as the exposed side. Light damage, as most of you probably know, is irreversible, although we'll talk about some newer treatments in a little while. So display recommendations for natural science specimens. Fifty lock is generally the upper limit recommended, even though this can result in damage to some types of feathers. You shouldn't worry about flash photography necessarily in your collections, but lights should always be turned off in storage and when you're not using a space. Almost all the fading color you see in the specimens and in feather birds as well is the result of light damage, and it also may affect the structural color. It can break down the keratin, which will then affect the pigment. So if you can at all rotate your objects on display, that's great if you can take them off display for a while to protect them from light. That's a great other simple solution in historic homes or places where you have things out. If you cover the windows whenever the space is not being used, that's another suggestion. Okay, well, this is a problem that everybody seems to be facing, but before we talk about pests, we have one more poll question. Susan, if you could pull up poll question number nine, which is, do you have number nine? Oops, did I miss number eight? Okay, number nine is, do you have a pest management program in place? So you'll see here that, yes, that's great. Well, so most of you do. But you'll see here, substantial portions of the bare amount at left have been denuded by an advanced or mastable infestation. Taxidermy, study skins and dioramas provide a relative smorgasbord for insect and rodent pests. Even if the specimens have been treated with arsenic, as most of them have, or other forms of heavy metal pesticides, they aren't immune to damage. George, do you want to talk a little bit about this bird? You know what, maybe we'll talk about this later, but just remember this one, because we might bring it up again, the bird at right to attack rodent damage, right? Yeah, we're going to talk about that more in the end. I think in time, we'll pass over that. Okay, for the moment. Okay, and just here's some more examples. Here are some details of that tiger mount we saw earlier showing some of the insect damage. And while the fur is present, unfortunately, it's no longer attached to the skin due to grazing at the base and roots of the hair. These objects could not even be vacuumed without substantial loss of hair. And the image at upper right, while not a taxidermy specimen, shows a first nations fur coat which had a very similar condition, but after cleaning. So the beige areas, which are the skin, used to be covered in brown fur, and this is just shown to you as a cautionary tale. When in doubt about the stability, please always consult a conservator before you even attempt dry cleaning. Okay, so I'm quickly going to just show you fire. Fire can potentially lead to the quick and catastrophic loss of an entire collection. Reducing the risk of fire needs to be done at several levels. Appropriate fire and smoke detection, alarms, fire suppression systems, and isolating collections from other activities, as well as good housekeeping. In terms of taxidermy itself, the soot residues can be difficult to remove. High temperatures during a fire event, as well as water from firefighting can cause skins to break down, or even to gelatinize. High humidity after a fire can lead to mold growth. So the images at left and right are a before and during treatment of a soot and grease damage, less or coot or rug. And here are some more images of what that would want. I don't know if you can tell. It's a bird, a duck, at the top completely covered in soot, and there's a before and after. Just dry cleaning of another specimen. Okay, water is another thread. And George is going to talk a little bit about water as a threat to your collections. The first slide you see on the left there is the whale shark mount. And this is a natural skin mount of a whale shark at the Vanderbilt Museum on Centerport, Long Island. And what happened was a pipe basically leaked on this piece and just caused a steady drip, which the water migrated underneath the skin, between the skin and the mannequin, and really caused this piece to come apart. The large panels of skin were falling off this piece like wallpaper, really, really terrible condition. The piece on the right is a doll sheep mount, or was a doll sheep mount. And this is one of the paper mannequins. And you'll see that water will start to de-elaminate this paper. You'll start to see any of the fasteners or little brads that were used by the taxidermists will rust, oxidize, really tear these mannequins apart. And this is where we'll talk about heavily damaged pieces. What's the protocol? What do we do? Often there comes a point where a client will ask us, do we restore this piece? Do we conserve it, or do we get rid of it? And that's a great question. A piece like this, there's several things we can do. We cannot restore the skin. This piece was completely destroyed. But the horns still have a value. The horns are still the essence of the piece as far as the client is concerned. So we can restore this mannequin and actually mount a new cape on this mannequin or get a contemporary mannequin and do a completely new mount with a new cape but the same set of horns. So there's a lot of options that are usually available to the client. And basically we look at these and we go down a checklist. When it comes to a point where a specimen is really damaged, we look at the rarity of the specimen. How rare is this piece? Is it an animal that's endangered? Is it protected? Does it have any historic value? Even if it's a common specimen, does the piece have historic value that we cannot let anything happen to this piece and we must restore or conserve this piece? The other would be the availability of a fresh specimen. If you're dealing with something that we cannot get a new specimen, then everything must be done to preserve the existing one. The cost to treat. A lot of times our clients will ask us to weigh out the differences. What is it going to cost to treat the piece versus what is it going to cost to replace the piece? And with a lot of smaller institutions, that's a big decision making factor. What do we do with this piece? Sometimes with the price of taxidermy today, it's actually more cost effective to replace the piece with a new specimen than to treat the piece. But again, many things need to be considered and taken into consideration. Of course, you know your collection best. It all is tied into the nature of your collection, the mission, and other philosophical things that we will get into a little bit more later as well. I just want to crank through these last two. Agents of deterioration, which are just to make sure you have disaster. Disaster planning is just so important that we like to mention it whenever possible. This is an image of burpee museum specimens, which were in temporary storage after a burst pipe from refrigerated temperatures on a Christmas Eve flood damage. So good emergency preparedness can mitigate certain hazards and ensure other emergencies don't turn into disasters. So there's a lot of resources online, and please make sure to include taxidermy in your disaster planning. And then just security. Putting up a physical barrier for security is really important to protect specimens, but more importantly for health protection since potential contaminants, as we've discussed, from manufacturer or the past treatment can really be hazardous to your visitors. So now we're going to get into treatment. And Susan, if you could pull up poll question number 10, we'd like to know from all of you who takes care of your taxidermy. Because we've been talking, we have a conservator and a taxidermist, and if you have mounster of hair, who would you turn to? I think George and I have had a lot of conversations about this, but I think ideally both, if you can have a partnership, we really want to have the caveat here that George happens to be a person who has worked a lot with museums and understands the AIC code of ethics and understands the things that AIC, the museum, the level of care from having worked with conservators as well. I think that as he told us earlier, there's a wide range of taxidermists and I think that some people have never been familiar with the museum environment and would feel, in their practice, would feel comfortable changing things out and doing heavy levels of restoration that perhaps would not be appropriate for your collection. So it really has to be a kind of approach where you work together with a taxidermist and a conservator, but I don't know. George, do you want to say anything now about that or when we get into the treatment? Sure. You know, in early times, we saw a lot of taxidermists that basically did a little bit of everything and were very tuned into museum work. Today, it's changed quite a bit and a lot of taxidermists do not have the experience dealing with museum specimens or conservators. So I think it really just needs to be something where the institution needs to be very cautious on who they speak with and who they hire. And I think the key is both, is to work with a good conservator and work with a qualified taxidermist. But I think you more so need to check the qualifications of your taxidermist or leave that up to your conservator. So essentially, your conservator should manage your taxidermist because most taxidermists do not know about these methods and materials, unfortunately. They're just not exposed to it and there's really no need for it in the commercial taxidermy world today. Right. Okay. So I'm just going to quickly go through some treatment methods that conservators would use and then George is going to talk about some of his, too. So conservators employ a variety of tools and materials for cleaning taxidermy, depending on the type of mount, wet or solvent clean is used on selected areas and maybe necessary when a mount has not been regularly maintained or has been in a fire, smoke, or other event, but is kind of, you have to think, is a much less common approach. Poll question number 11, Susan, if you could pull that up. I just would like to ask what steps you all have taken to maintain or treat your taxidermy. So let's see. Brush vacuum cleaning. While keeping your mounts free of dirt and debris is essential, we don't recommend DIY cleaning unless you've had training from a conservator or other experienced person. You could have a taxidermist if reputable taxidermist as well. As you've heard, these mounts are complex and may have unseen issues that only become apparent upon close inspection. Cleaning must be done taking the safety precautions we've mentioned and using the personal protective equipment. And in many cases, you want to use a, well, you have to use a HEPA vacuum, a high-efficiency particulate air filter because of some of these materials we talked about as well as, very often, we clean through a mesh screen, which is specially designed for this purpose. In terms of treatment, you'll find a conservator would be doing a stabilization treatment for you very often. In images above, the moose had a vertical split on the cheek, which was lifted and disfiguring. The conservation treatment involved the addition of a heat-set adhesive and a tone-synthetic fabric to realign the skin. Below the monitor lizard, TOE has been stabilized in a similar manner to prevent the film material from spilling out. In this case, as we saw, it was part of a contemporary art sculpture, which was viewed from a great distance. You know, George, a taxidermist might have other ideas, but this is kind of more of a conservative conservation approach. So I think we're going to kind of, we found out we have to hurry it along now, and I do want to get to George's example. So I'm going to go quickly through here. As you've seen, bird mounts can look ragged over time, and vacuum cleaning with very low suction and microbrush tip allows you to gently reprene feathers back into alignment. And this is something that really needs to be done by a conservator, or again, you could be trained by a conservator to do it, but it's something that we would not recommend doing yourself. In terms of pest control, there are several methods. This is an example of an anoxic treatment. This tiger had extensive insect damage and was placed in a chamber with oxygen scavengers in order to kill, for 30 days, in order to kill all stages of possible insect growth from eggs up into the adults. Freezing may be suitable for some mounts, but it really depends on the specific composite of materials present, and a normal household freezer will not suffice. You really need to consult a conservator for this. I'm happy all of you have a pest management program. I hope it's more of an integrated pest management where you're really doing prevention, monitoring, and then illumination when necessary, but we really try to prevent things. And we're going to have some resources on the links, too, about IPM, so if you need more information. Here's an example of a skin repair. It's not the same object, but it's just showing you something that could be done. Okay, so something that could be done on a heavily damaged piece, whether you would want to do this, is very debatable, so I'm not going to talk more about it. It's just an example, and I'm rushing through because we just found out we have to end at 2.15. So here's another example of a fill, in this case on a small hedgehog, and it was done using toned bamboo and epoxy to place it in place. George had this picture of a prior restoration that was done with incompatible materials and a beautiful elephant, so we just wanted to show you kind of what happens if you use the wrong materials. Okay, so George, I'm not sure how we should proceed. We have four minutes. Are we going to be cut off in four minutes, Susan? What? Is it true? Will we be totally cut out? Okay. So, George, are you there? Well, we can go through this. That's fine. Basically, we just have some treatment shots there, you can see, of the whale shark, where just to basically illustrate that if these pieces seem to be really in disrepair, sometimes there is something that could be done. So the whale shark there, that was on Centerport, Long Island. We have some pictures of this red howler monkey where we actually rehydrated the face, rebuilt facial features, moved the entire structure of the face. The next slide, you'll see this polar bear where we actually removed the jaw set, rebuilt all the lips on the jaw, rebuilt a new nose, installed a new tongue. So these are more invasive restorations. Yes. Same thing on this chimpanzee here, removing the paint from the face, repainting the face, doing some structural work. Same thing on the proboscis monkey, where you can see it really kind of, you can update an old piece very nicely by a severe restoration. Right. Same thing with the koalas. Okay. This is some flocks were made. So again, you know, the degree of restoration you're going to do, it really depends, is very dependent on your collection and what the purpose of your artifacts are at the age, and I think that's something that needs to be made, decisions that need to be made very carefully in conjunction, you know, your curator in conjunction with a curator.