6 Ghastly Works of 'Art' Made from Dead Animals
Taxidermy is a craft impossible not to associate with serial killings, thanks in large part to Norman Bates, Ed Gein, Leatherface, and the maniacs that made all of this crazy bullshit.
Fanciful Literary Characters
We're not sure who those teeth originally belonged to, but we're glad he doesn't have them anymore.
Amanda Sutton is the owner and resident animal-murder baroness of Amanda's Autopsies, where she cobbles together mummified creatures into Alice in Wonderland-themed horrors, because apparently doll making didn't reach quite the level of creepiness she was looking for in a hobby.
She is available for private tutoring so that you may one day learn to transform a dead squirrel into your very own mustachioed Victorian gentleman.
Hooray.
Hybrid Pretend Animals
Enrique Gomez de Molina assembles fantasy creatures from the spare parts of different animals, producing a gallery of unsettling wuzzles we would expect to find in Ed Gein's dorm room at Hogwart's.
Finally, somebody cut out the middleman and invented nightmares for awake people.
His finished pieces have sold at auction for crazy amounts of money, but De Molina was recently arrested for illegally importing body parts from endangered species to use as art supplies, so we imagine the cryptozoological residents of Day Tripper Zoo will be in short supply for the next few years.
It's a shame, too: His next project was going to be a pandafrog.
Finger Puppets
Above: Tim Burton's Stuart Little.
Photographer Nathalia Edenmont likes to make finger puppets out of freshly dead animals and take pictures of them, because there is a door in her mind that burst open with a gust of howling lunacy and refuses to be shut.
Edenmont also beheads rabbits and house cats, because she wants the Internet to hate her.
Roadkill Furniture
Hey, remember that girl from Thompson Twins with the ridiculous haircut and the face of a dead alien? Well, nowadays, she stuffs dead foxes into the backs of Chesterfields and calls herself "Miss Pokeno."
Her actual name is Alannah Currie, and she describes herself as an "armchair destructivist," a phrase which here means "She attaches dead animals to pieces of furniture." More specifically, roadkill animals, which she goes to great pains to locate before she lashes them to the arms of sofas, because she literally has nothing else to do with her time.
Pictured: a couch that nobody unaffected by Megan's Law would ever purchase.
Rodent Lamps
We can't imagine a more soothing nightlight for the child in your life.
British lighting designer Alex Randall builds rodent lamps for private clients, as well as hotels and restaurants, who apparently want their patrons to think of nothing but writhing pestilential disease while they sleep and/or eat. Randall describes herself as an animal lover, arguing that taxidermy is an ethical way to preserve and celebrate the beauty of nature. Because nothing celebrates beauty quite like shoving a lamp in a squirrel's mouth and nailing it to a wall.
Behold, nature's awesome grandeur!
Coyote Pillows and Otter Tables
Nothing makes you feel quite as safe at night as cuddling up to a corpse.
You know those nights when you're snuggled warmly in your roadkill swan sofa, reading by the light of your rat infestation lamp, and it's time to go to bed, but you're just too comfortable to get up? Well, now you don't have to, because with these decorative throw pillows from Dumont Taxidermy, you can enjoy a peaceful slumber right there on the swan coach nestled in the eternal embrace of a dead coyote.
That's not all they offer. For just a few thousand dollars, you can buy coffee tables filled with vigilant wolves and frolicking otters, arranged in lifelike habitat scenes sure to delight your house guests for the precious few moments they are able to see them before you chain potato sacks over their heads and drag them down into the basement.
E. Reid Ross does some other stuff at RealToyGun.com.
