Walter Potter’s Two-Faced Kitten at the Morbid Anatomy Museum

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Eccentric Victorian taxidermist Walter Potter’s famous two-faced kitten taxidermy comes to the Morbid Anatomy Museum.
Walter Potter two-faced kitten taxidermy
Photo by Chris Bradley via Morbid Anatomy

This month the Morbid Anatomy Museum is bringing Victorian taxidermist Walter Potter’s two-faced kitten to the public…for the first time ever in the US!

Walter Potter began creating whimsical anthropomorphic taxidermy dioramas in 1854 at the age of 19 with his first piece, The Death and Burial of Cock Robin. He spent his life filling his family-owned pub, The White Lion in Bramber, with amazing and whimsical scenes. Potter’s work also included examples of nature gone wrong, such as four-legged chicks and a two-headed lamb.

In 2003, however, Potter’s Bramber Museum collection was auctioned off and scattered all over the world into private collections.

The kitten, from the collection of Karen Holzner, will be displayed along with numerous other extraordinary objects in the first of a series of exhibits called The Collector’s Cabinet. Other oddities will include an anthropomorphic taxidermy squirrel bar scene from Wisconsin’s own Cress Funeral Home presented by Mike Zohn, a Beauchene skull by Ryan Matthew Cohn, and more.

Morbid Anatomy founder Joanna Ebenstein, who will present the kitten, is the co-author of Walter Potter’s Curious World of Taxidermy.

You can find more on The Collector’s Cabinet and other upcoming exhibitions right here.

Book shelf that converts into a coffin

Bookshelf that Converts into a Coffin

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DIY wood shelf converts into a coffin

This looks like a clean, modern shelf design, but it holds an unusual secret – it is designed to last a lifetime…and much longer. With a few simple steps, the plywood shelving unit converts into a coffin.

DIY wood shelf converts into a coffin

The Shelves for Life project was designed by William Warren.

Get the plans to build your own right here.

How to convert your shelf into a coffin

Looking for other strange ways to spend eternity?

Lonesome George: How The AMNH Turned the Last of a Species Into Taxidermy

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Lonesome George, the last known Pinta Island giant tortoise, just ended his run at the American Museum of Natural History. The 200-pound tortoise was brought into captivity in the Galápagos in 1972. Despite on-going efforts to find him a mate, another Pinta Island tortoise was never found. When he died of natural causes in 2012, at the age of 102 years old, master taxidermist George Dante was tasked with the unique challenge of preserving the last of a species both for beauty as well as scientific study.

How was that achieved?

Go behind the scenes with the AMNH team in this short documentary to see the taxidermy process that brought Lonesome George back to life.

Preserving Lonesome George

A taxidermist works on Lonesome George at the American Museum of Natural History

Now that the exhibit has ended, Lonesome George will return to his home on the Galápagos Islands.

Mummy brown paint

Mummy Brown: Painting with the Dead

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Human remains were once the primary ingredient of a popular pigment used by Pre-Raphaelite artists.

Read more

New Species of Stick Insect is Second Largest in the World

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This new species of stick insect discovered in Vietnam is almost two feet long, making it the second largest insect in the world.
Entomologist Joachim Bresseel holds the second largest species of insect on Earth

Entomologist Joachim Bresseel is pictured above holding a female Phryganistria heusii yentuensis, a giant new species of stick insect discovered in Vietnam during a study by the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences. At 21 inches long, it is the second largest insect on Earth.

The purpose of the study was to learn more about the unique bugs, whose camouflage and remote habitats make them difficult to locate.

The longest insect in the world is Phobaeticus chani, or Chan’s Megastick, from the island of Borneo. It measures in at 22.3 inches.

via Discover