I cannot really explain why we kept it for so long.
For one thing we have always been town or city dwellers and only really likely to catch sight of a fox once in a blue moon around the dustbins or back alleyways in our local area.
The object itself was a bit worse for wear when purchased by my parents at an auction sale that we attended in Somerset whilst on a family holiday.
One of its ears was ragged. Any slight movement would result in a light dusting of what looked like a sawdust filling. Its glass eyes were loose and at risk from falling out altogether. I put this down to former owners being less than caring for it as far as the stuffing and artificial lenses were concerned but hoped that the rather chewed ears were an indication that the animal had put up a hell of a fight in its last moments of existence at the mercy of a shotgun wielding farmer or a pack of bloodthirsty hunting hounds.
In its lack of animation and character in that staged pose by a Taxidermist it was a mere shadow of the real article.
It was actually pretty creepy when displayed on the hallway wall and our two family dogs kept a very wide berth whenever they came by it.
Gradually the fox head was relegated to less visual positions in the house before eventually ending up in a box in the attic and then, after another relocation of the family, into the garage. I did not feel compelled to retrieve it after that and I cannot honestly say if it got thrown out or was given away, in the miscellaneous contents of a box, to a Charity Shop.
The urge to go out and replace it has never crossed my mind.
However, if you had lived in the Victorian Era chances are that your drawing room will have been graced by a display of the skills of Taxidermy as these items of rather morbid anatomy were very popular at that time.
Perhaps one of the pre-eminent exponents of what is quite an artistic trait was an Englishman, Walter Potter (1835-1918).
In 1861 his obsession, which had developed from a childhood hobby with stuffing small creatures. led to his opening of a museum in his local area of Sussex. It was a perfect showcase for his specialism within the art form termed anthropomorphic dioramas.
These almost theatrical type scenes appealed to the whimsical Victorians and within "Mr Potters Museum of Curiosities" he exhibited quite intricate representations of everyday life which included a den of rats being raided by the police, a village school occupied by 48 rabbits
Other animals given the Potter treatment were sword fighting squirrels and a guinea pig cricket match.
His very first tableau had been a depiction of a famous children's story of "The death and burial of Cock Robin" with a procession of pall-bearing birds and other animals in mourning .
Potter was a very skilled artisan and he filled his Museum with up to 10,000 items from the larger scenes through to individual classical style stuffed animals such as collections of birds in glass dome display cases.
To appeal to the masses there was also a number of freak show items more likely to have formed part of a travelling fair which included a puppy with two faces, a six legged cat and a quadruped duckling.
Fashions and taste change and although the collection was still attracting 30,000 visitors well into the 1990's it was necessary to deflect animal cruelty claims by placing notices on the exhibits that the stuff creatures had all died a natural death and not to forget by then well over 100 years prior.
In 2003 the then owners of the collection put it up for sale.
The artist Damian Hirst offered £1 million in an attempt to keep it all together but the Auction House advised that the best method of disposal was in the form of individual exhibits and over 691 Lots were put under the hammer. The proceeds were a lower figure of £500000.
The best sellers were Cock Robin and the nuptials of the kittens making around £45000 between them.
For all of its battered and spooky appearance I like to muse that our fox may have been the work of Walter Potter. No, I won't be claiming it back from whoever has it now.
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