The Forgotten Rowland Ward Archive
and
The collector who brought it back to life
Over forty years ago, the quiet, determined work of collector and naturalist, Jon Saggerson, backed by his career, training, and instincts placed him in exactly the right position to rescue a forgotten Rowland Ward Archive – it was the last great paper archive of London’s most storied taxidermy firm.
What he saved was not simply a collection of photographs and papers—it was the cultural memory of a company that shaped Victorian natural history, colonial hunting culture, and the aesthetics of the museum age.
A portrait of the young Rowland Ward in 1894
From “The Sketch” Magazine
The Rescue of a Rowland Ward Archive
What sets Jon Saggerson apart is not simply his knowledge, his taxidermy collections or his connections, but his decisive action at a moment when Rowland Ward’s documentary heritage was on the brink of oblivion.
A vanishing archive
When the Rowland Ward company was finally wound up in the late 1970’s by its last legal owners its paper records including the company’s own historic scrapbooks were treated as little more than office detritus. Some material had already been stored in damp cellars and dusty lofts, where environmental damage destroyed or severely damaged irreplaceable documents. Other papers were simply thrown into a skip.
The idea of the Archive as a coherent historical collection had been lost or overlooked. Scrapbook pages were sold off individually by the company’s last legal owners. Photographs were scattered. Context evaporated.
Into this chaos stepped Jon Saggerson.
Over months, he tracked down and purchased page after page, photograph after photograph, each one being sold separately, each one a fragment of a much larger story. Through persistence and a collector’s instinct for pattern, he managed to recover a lot of the surviving original paper archive of the Rowland Ward company.
Rowland Ward Archive – Treasures Saved
Among the treasures that Jon Saggerson saved were
- Original company scrapbooks filled with clippings from newspapers and magazines dated to the latter part of the 1800’s.
- Pre‑WWI photographs, stamped and embossed
- Pages annotated in red ink by Arthur Manning, a long‑serving Ward employee who understood their historical value
- Many unpublished studio photographs of animals and people
- images of mounts including a Panda (once mis-indexed as “Big Game” in Rowland Ward’s original book) which is now held in the NHM, along with many other Ward specimens that were donated to the Museum
- the original studio photograph used in Lydecker’s the Game Animals of Africa (1908)
- an original studio photograph of a Gorilla from the Congo dated 1911
This material did not come from private hands—it came directly from the Rowland Ward company archive itself, rescued at the moment of its dissolution. Without Jon’s intervention, it would almost certainly have been lost forever.
original photo from the lost Rowland Ward Archive: The Kivu Gorilla brought back from the Eastern Congo by T. Alexander Barns in 1920-1921, mounted by Rowland Ward and photographed in his studio.
A scrapbook clipping of a news article about the “Parti-coloured bear” mounted by Rowland Ward. The original photo is contained in Jon Saggerson’s Rowland Ward Archive. This bear is in store at the British Museum.
The introductory plate from R. Lydekker’s 1908 book “The Game Animals of Africa” published by Rowland Ward. The original photograph of the lion used for the plate is contained in Jon Saggerson’s Rowland Ward Archive.
The original cutting from the scrapbooks of Rowland Ward Archive. The “parti-coloured bear” (Ward’s Panda) . Jon Saggerson’s collection includes original photographs, and the bear has been viewed and is stored in the British Museum.
photo copyright: Jon Saggerson
The original advertisement plate for Rowland Ward’s book “Great Game of the World”
photo copyright: Jon Saggerson
An original hand-drawn sketch of the advertisement that appeared in The Lady Magazine in the late 19th century
photo copyright: Jon Saggerson
Why this matters
Rowland Ward was not just a taxidermist. He was a self-made brand, a publisher, a chronicler of empire, and a craftsman whose name became synonymous with taxidermy and preservation excellence. The firm, started by his father, Henry then shaped by his brother Edwin and finally rocketed to success by Rowland Ward himself was the firm that shaped the aesthetics of natural history display for over half a century. It influenced museums, private collectors, and the visual language of exploration.
Jon’s collection is therefore not just a personal achievement—it is an act of stewardship. It restores coherence to a body of material that had been scattered, neglected, and misunderstood. It ensures that future researchers, collectors, and historians will have access to primary evidence that would otherwise have vanished.
A Collector Who Understood the Value of Memory
Jon’s fascination with Rowland Ward began long before he found the archive. He had grown up hearing stories of the firm’s legendary mounts, its Piccadilly showroom, and its reputation as the “Taxidermist to the World.” But what makes Jon unusual is that he didn’t just collect objects – he collected context.
It is said that Rowland Ward himself once employed someone solely to cut out every newspaper clipping, magazine reference, and printed mention of the firm. Jon, unknowingly, became the modern inheritor of that. His archive includes fragments of a vanished publicity machine: drafts, proofs, and even an original hand‑drawn advertisement in pencil for Ward’s famous “Insect Death” moth‑proofing remedy.
The original hand-drawn advertisement (one of a few different styles of advert) from Jon’s archive that would appear in “The Lady Magazine” of the late 19th century, is particularly striking. It shows two women struggling with moth damage to curtains and fabrics—a domestic crisis Ward promised to solve. It is a rare glimpse into Ward’s internal creative process, revealing how the firm shaped its public image long before the final adverts reached the press.
Was Rowland Ward Really “the Best”?
I asked Jon this question. It’s a deceptively simple question: Was Rowland Ward truly the greatest taxidermist in Britain between 1870 and 1913?
The answer, says Jon, as with most things in history, is complicated.
Ward’s workshop produced work at an astonishing scale. Some mounts were exquisite—anatomically informed, beautifully balanced, and artistically posed. Others were less successful. In some cases, the taxidermists had never seen the animal alive, or even in photographs, and were working from skins alone. A few pieces were mounted on shields the wrong way around. Perhaps this was due to client instruction; perhaps it was simply error. The archive does not always tell us.
But what becomes clear is that Ward’s influence extended far beyond the quality of any single mount. He pushed the entire field forward. He studied anatomy. He encouraged his staff to refine their craft. And even after the golden age of big‑game hunting had passed, the firm produced some of its finest work in the 1920s and 1930s—long after the glamour of empire had faded.
“Ward may not sometimes have been the best, but he was unquestionably the most important. His presence forced others to improve. His innovations shaped the expectations of museums and private collectors alike. And his brand – The Jungle, 167 Piccadilly – became synonymous with prestige” says Jon Saggerson.
Final Reflections
By rescuing the original archive materials, Jon Saggerson has preserved the last echoes of a company that once defined an era. His archive allows us to see Rowland Ward not as a monolithic brand, but as a living, evolving workshop – full of people, ideas, experiments, and contradictions.
This archive also has a role to play in further examining the cultural importance of colonialism and exploration evidenced by the artefacts within this collection.
In telling Jon’s story, we tell Ward’s story. And in telling Ward’s story, we can look through the lens to uncover more of the cultural heritage that might otherwise have vanished forever.
See more about Jon Saggerson here
This article is part of the Victorian Taxidermists section. Explore more research here →
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