Wrapped mounts only

Thank you, LTB. Your wild cat is fantastic!
-Tom

 

You euro guys are amazing.true masters.anyone who can wrap there own mount and capture such perfect poses and anatomy is a true artist in my eyes.amazing marten. I love seeing your guys work.its just amazes me.thanks for showing

 

Couldn't agree more! Very nice.

 

Tomh, it goes without saying, that marten is excellent. Thank you for sharing.

 

In 1991 I attended my first NTA convention in Reno Nevada. There I met a man with a funny last name, Henry Witchers Inchumuk. I had heard of Henry before but have never met him in person until then. At the 1991 convention he had a pair of grey foxes and a raccoon family. All were rapped mounts. He even showed us by pushing on the belly of the mama raccoon so we could see that it was soft. Both were beautiful renderings and showed us all that the wrapped method still had a place in taxidermy.

Since then the push has seemed to be toward carcass casting and sculpting manikins even for the small stuff. But I keep coming back to wrapping because it can be customized to a specific shape and attitude and the whole mammal including limbs and head can be adjusted during the mounting process and after the skin is sewn up. I love it for the flexibility it offers.

This last weekend at the 46th annual NTA convention in Laton, Utah I was fortunate to be awarded the "Henry Witchers Inchumuk Memorial Award" for the highest scoring small mammal squirrel size or smaller. A photo of this mount is currently on the home page of this site. And guess what, Its a wrapped mount. Thanks Henry for showing us the way.

 

Congrats Scott , and great seeing you and your work again. A very fitting and deserved award. Great piece !

 

old school still has a place in these modern times !

 

And long may it continue. Great work, the old way.

 

This was my first attempt at making a form with excelsior, but I don't think it turned out bad.

 

Here is some work of Snowhare we did while making his training DVDs.
http://www.kastaway.com/store/store_sub.cfm?Category_ID=1&Sub_Category_ID=14

 

Pine Marten hand wrapped....custom rock.

 

On the Taxidermy Industry forum, post #38, Dave Ferguson shows us a series of photos of a mule deer he mounted using the full skull and wrapping the neck and shoulders in excelsior then finishing with clay, plaster – whatever produced results. It was a challenge he set for himself and the resulting mount was as fine as if he had used a foam form. His post stimulated interest in the subject of excelsior wrapping.

While this method is often popularly referred to as some inferior archaic technique, most of the birds in all the museums across the country were done this way with results as good as they get. Some of the best birdmen prefer it and are still using it today.

We old timers who subscribed to the North Western School of Taxidermy correspondence course learned it in lesson book 2. It’s an easy technique to learn but not so easy to master without practice.

I illustrated the method in my books, the Jonas Technique Vol. One, on birds and Vol. Two, on mammals. Take a look.

 

Still wrapping birds!
Bob

 

Would love to see more. I too, was a North Western School of Taxidermy *student*. Still have the entire course and extras. It is easier/faster to slap a hide onto a form but all your mounts look like cookie cutter copies of all the others. Wrapped bodies take time and skill and a knowledge of your subject. But your poses with that method are only as finite as your imagination.

 

That looks hard to do!

 

OK Sea Wolf, here's more.
This big cat was done by Bernard Ippolito, now a retired taxidermist who worked with the old timers in New York like Louis Jonas, Steve Horn, etc. The head was carved from a block of foam.

 

Mr. Joe
I see you said that no one commented so I will.
Doing large mammals that way nowadays would be a colossal waste of time for many reasons ..
The museum guys/gals of the past had time to do things that way (I have worked on many
Many the same way)
not in todays shops you could not afford it.

that jag would maybe place in the pros. at a comp. but not in masters (I like it)
ps love the base..the driftwood is a nice touch jk

Now small mammals are a different story

 

The biggest I wrap is coyote size, and then my arm falls off.

 

Mr. wa,

I don’t know you and I don’t know what you know or how you know it, except what I can infer from what you wrote above. No disrespect intended….

Quote: The museum guys/gals of the past had time to do things that way (I have worked on many Many the same way) [If in fact you did, show us some example or other proof.]
not in todays shops you could not afford it.
…..that jag would maybe place in the pros. at a comp. but not in masters

Your comments are all presumptions.

(1) Apparently you presume that the jaguar was done by a museum taxidermist? Benny Ipollito who did this magnificent jaguar, is a retired commercial taxidermist. In commercial taxidermy time is money. I get the impression that you think he took an inordinate amount of time, likely losing money on the job. Maybe it didn’t occur to you that there likely were no suitable jaguar forms back in the paper days when this mount was done.

(2) You presumed that it’s not cost affective to make one’s own forms in today’s shops, (excelsior or otherwise) that people with the know-how and skill couldn’t afford it. Was money the only thing that motivated you when you “…worked on many Many the same way?” , in a museum or in a commercial shop?

(3) “…. Maybe place in the pros. at a comp. but not in masters.” Perhaps you would like to tell us how you made that presumption. Critique it for us, please.

Here’s some friendly advice: Change the icon on your posts. It’s hard to take a man seriously when he presents himself in such an uncomplimentary way.