The Ancestral Craft Of Taxidermy

Possibly, it is one of the oldest professions that still survives despite the millennia of its origin. Taxidermy dates back, according to anthropology scholars, to about 7,800 years ago. These first signs were located in the Atacama Desert, in northern Chile, a technique used by the Chinchorro culture – according to Wikipedia,” name given to a group of fishermen who inhabited the coast of the Atacama Desert between 7020 and 1500 BC. . C”.— in the preparation of corpses using taxidermy.

Since those remote beginnings, today, the profession has another meaning, even with more artistic doses, and, of course, people do not enter the catalog. The current definition is “naturalizing animals to preserve them with the appearance of life and thus facilitate their exhibition, study and conservation.”

Few legal workshops are dedicated to this work in the country; One of these is located in Jerez, with a history of 58 years since Ramón Franco started it in 1965. This man from Jaén, who lived in Jerez when he married a woman from Jerez, was a State official, a job that he combined, in the afternoons, with his enthusiasm for taxidermy.

Starting a taxidermy workshop has the same administrative and fiscal steps as any other business. The difference is that the one who monitors and controls their work is Environment and Seprona, who, they say, stop by the workshop periodically to inspect and check documentation. In taxidermy, which etymologically means to arrange the skin, there are two modalities once the pieces are collected: naturalization with the skin and another with the bone placed on a board. Both options have different working techniques.

A long and laborious process

“Naturalization is the most complex, but it is the most beautiful; it is giving life to what no longer has it. It is a very laborious process that begins with the tanning of the skin, the creation of the mold imitating the morphology of the animal and the touches finals to achieve maximum fidelity to the workmanship of the piece using putties and other products to assemble everything,” says Ramon Franco Jr., who recognizes that this craft has a large part of the technique and another no less important part. This artistic part is linked to the sculpture: “You have to make the eyes, eyelashes, nose, mouth… all by sculpting and molding the already tanned skin on a mold.”

This mold was made with plaster, straw, and other heavy materials, “which in the end caused the piece to weigh more than if it were alive. Now carbon fiber or other resistant and light materials are used. This is how it is possible to “give an expression of life to these animals,” a trade that could well be called hunting sculptors. “We have had clients for many years, so they must consider us good at this job,” says Ramón Franco Sr., who still vaguely remembers the jobs that came to him from almost all of Spain: “Ramón, the deer turned out well; I still have it for thirty years,” says the master taxidermist with great doses of pride in the legacy that has come from his hands.