The Mix Series 2018 | Episode 34
GLEANED ELSEWHERE
LAUNCESTON taxidermist Gerald Schnitzhofer has one of Australia’s rarest occupations. .............. Mr Schnitzhofer, a former Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery employee, operates a taxidermy business from the museum’s Inveresk site. .............. He said taxidermy was coming back into vogue and a lot of Australians were learning and practising the art of preserving animals, as museum specimens, hunting trophies, works of art or to immortalise pets. .............. But Mr Schnitzhofer is one of only two taxidermists in Australia who practice the non-traditional freeze-drying method. He removes the animals’ internal organs, poses the animal, then loads it into a 2m-long drying chamber. .............. “The fleshy parts of the body remain, you use a bit of wire to set their posture, and some stuffing to fill the voids,” he said. “I buy in some really good quality glass eyes from Germany.” .............. The freeze-drying process begins at -15C and progresses to -8C under a powerful vacuum. The time the animals must spend in the chamber before they are fully dried out depends on their size. .............. “It’s a long process. A cat can take four to six weeks,” he said. .............. Mr Schnitzhofer said a woolly ram, preserved for the Tasmanian Wool Centre at Ross, had taken about a week to fully freeze, due to wool being such a good insulator, and then it took about five months to dry out. .............. His latest charge is a baby giraffe, which has been kneeling inside the dryer for about three months. About a dozen other smaller animals have been arranged around it to fully use the space. .............. “The giraffe was from Adelaide Zoo,” Mr Schnitzhofer said. “It died about 36 years ago. It has been frozen for that long. It was kept in a cool store at Devonport wharf and no one knew what it was, I think it was forgotten. They closed the store down and we found a giraffe and two husky dogs. The Australian Antarctic Division took the huskies.” .............. Shortly after the giraffe was transferred to the museum about seven years ago, the museum made Mr Schnitzhofer redundant. .............. “The giraffe was put on the backburner, it was kept in a refrigerator,” he said. .............. This year a Victorian artist found out about the giraffe and bought it from the museum. Mr Schnitzhofer said due to space constraints, he needed to preserve the giraffe in a kneeling posture.
••••••••••••••••••••••••
GO2 ...http://www.instahu.com/p/1857261277030879552_205377676
GO2 ...GOOGLEsearch 1
GO2 ...GOOGLEsearch 2
GO2 ...GOOGLEsearch 1
GO2 ...GOOGLEsearch 2
No comments:
Post a Comment