you never know what's next

one of our long time clients brought us this mini diorama yesterday.  his cat had pushed it off its special spot on top of a corner cupboard we built for him ... apparently, he was after the bird, or was just annoyed that there was not enough space on top of the cabinet for him to stretch out.  anyway, we'll fix just about any worthy old thing and this one was certainly that.  it was a masterfully constructed piece, gold leaf, thin antique glass, the 'ground' and sky was beautifully painted, and the little fox and the thrush were stuffed and posed and perfectly preserved.  there is even a little feather in the fox's mouth.  kinda cool, but at the same time, kinda creepy to some folks too.  stuffed wildlife is not for everyone.  it's headed back to its home tomorrow.  it was also an interesting lesson in minimalist display case construction ... we've built a few of them, and this one was a great example of the craft.  click the photos to enlarge them ...

in addition to the fox, we also cleaned what we think are the last items from our client's fire that happened back in 2009.  it's been a long, but interesting and rewarding process as they had an unusual number of actually quite exotic items, including some of our furniture, some elephant spears and a painted six board chest that had been 'in the family' for over 300 years.  here's the last of it ... 

 a pair of carved ivory and sandalwood letter openers ...

 this unusual triptych mirror that could be a free standing, or wall hanging object

 we never did figure out the exact medium ... it didn't seem to be paint and it didn't seem to be enamel, but whatever it was, it was beautiful, and beautifully executed ...

 and then we were taxidermists, cleaning and mounting an impala skull to a board that the client supplied.  the first step was to fill the porous skull with bondo and flatten it.  next we drilled a pilot hole using the little mdf jig and tapped it for a 1/4 x 20 stove bolt

 that tightened up nicely, but the skull still spun so we carefully added two sheetrock screws to fix it in place ... what's coming next week? you never know ...