Taxidermist's Reputation Is Mounting

A-listers in need of decor call 4 Amber Maykut

- LIZA WEISSTUCH

David Burtka got the call just before Thanksgiving. After almost three years of waiting, he was getting a unicorn.

It was actually a miniature white horse that taxidermist Amber Maykut found for him at an auction house in England. She'll fix up the vintage piece and replace the decorative horn. It will go on a wall-above the boar and beside the wildebeest-at the Hamptons home that the chef and actor owns with his husband, television and Broadway star Neil Patrick Harris.

"Amber uses so many different facets of art and sculpture to give life to an animal," said Burtka.

"I wouldn't even call her a taxidermist in the way people think of itnot in a middle-America-stuffeddeer-head way. It's so involved. She puts so much care into it." If you're an A-lister with a penchant for decorative dead animals, chances are you know about Maykut. The 43-year-old taxidermist has sold butterflies to Drew Barrymore, an antler mount to Nick Jonas and a jackalope to Courtney Love. Her squirrels have added a measure of realism to the Saks Fifth Avenue windows. Her birds decorate the NoMad Hotel in Manhattan.

Maykut is part of a new wave of taxidermists who don't fit the traditional mold. Their interests are varied: reverence for animals, devotion to the fine detail work of the laborintensive craft, a commitment to preservation.