Before The Glass
The story starts here with the world as it was before animals were put behind glass.
Join me along the journey through the 18th and 19th centuries
From Cabinets of Curiosities, Victorian Naturalists, The Gentlemen Collectors, The Colonial Explorers, The Menagerie, Zoo, & Circus & Victorian Culture to Victorian Taxidermy
The Gentlemen Collectors
and The Victorian Naturalists
The influence of the Victorian Naturalists and The Gentlemen Collectors
The era of discovery, collecting and fascination with Natural History

Adolphe Boucard, Walter Burton, and the Feather Trade That Consumed Itself

How the Victorians developed the hunt in the Scottish Highlands

The African Heart of a Modern Naturalist’s Library

The Wonder and Wounds of the Belgian Congo

Peaky Blinders on location at Calke Abbey

Edward Booth – Victorian Gentleman Collector

John Gould

Sir John Henry Greville Smyth

Walter Burton FZS, Naturalist, Taxidermist & Entomologist

John James Audubon, Naturalist, Scientist, Artist

Sir Vauncey Harpur Crewe

Thomas Henry Bowyer-Bower

Darwin, Wallace and Buffon: their importance to natural history

Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild of Tring

The history of Calke Abbey
Menagerie, Zoo & Circus
The spectacles and impresarios that fed Victorian fascination

History of the Zoological Society London

Polito’s Menagerie and The Exeter Exchange

The Menagerie

The Tower of London Menagerie

The Zoo Animals Story

Wombwell’s Menagerie

ZSL Library at Regents Park
Cabinets of Curiosities
How early collectors fed the Victorian fashion for display

Cabinets of Curiosities or Wunderkammers
Victorian Culture
Victorian culture and attitudes that shaped society.

Victorian taxidermy – eternalising beautiful creatures

Victorian feather fashion craze

The Victorian Era

The Victorian Attitude to Death

The Upper Class Decoration of Country Houses with Taxidermy

How the Victorians developed the hunt in the Scottish Highlands
Exhibitions and World Expos
The Victorians place is centre stage at the World Expos

The Great Exhibition 1851

Taxidermy At The Great Exhibition 1851

Hermann Ploucquet’s sensational tableaux at The Great Exhibition 1851




