LUXURY GOODS

Behind the bar in my local pub, above the pork scratchings and jars of pickled mussels, is more preserved wildlife, a shelf of Victorian stuffed birds and rodents in glass boxes. No doubt the publican keeps these here to remind the punters of life’s fleeting nature and that they might as well get in another round while they can, but they set the place a bit apart from your All Bar One, and give soaks something to raise their glasses to.

Some surroundings demand a little tasteful antique taxidermy — a mediaeval hall needs antlers, and there is nothing like a shiny dead armadillo to offset old books. After decades when taxidermy was reviled, good examples of stuffed animals are fetching bigger prices, catching up with fish, which was where the money was. The recent Bonhams auction of the contents of Mr Potter’s Museum of Curiosities at Jamaica Inn in Cornwall is testament to this. Walter Potter was the Victorian taxidermist who, as well as stuffing all kinds of exotic creatures, including assorted Siamese pigs, seven-legged kittens and two-faced sheep, also arranged slightly upsetting set-pieces using the young of domestic animals (in Rabbits’ Village School, a large class of 48 newborn bunnies perch behind desks, studying miniature slates. The Kittens’ Tea and Croquet Party incorporates 37 of the fluffy, glassy-eyed drowned darlings. One wears earrings and a crucifix.) The top pieces at the Potter sale all sold for four or five times their estimates, with the earliest tableau, The Death and Burial of Cock Robin, going for £23,500, making it the most expensive case of taxidermy in the world.