Dioramas were a late-19th-century development before wildlife colour film and photography took hold. Some museums began advancing from monotonous rows of cabinets displaying stuffed animals and placing them within three-dimensional settings and painted backdrops to convey a picture of creatures in their natural habitats. There were once dioramas at the British Museum, but few survive today. The habitat dioramas at the Powell-Cotton Museum, unaltered since their creation around the turn of the 20th century, are now a rarity.
Maj Percy Powell-Cotton (1866–1940) was a traveller, hunter, collector and naturalist. He made 28 collecting expeditions to Africa and Asia between 1887 and 1939. Although these started out as conventional game-hunting trips, the results often displayed as mounted heads back at Quex House, he gradually developed a deeper scientific interest in the animals, as well as in the lives of the tribespeople of the lands he travelled through.
This story is from the June 01, 2022 edition of Country Life UK.
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This story is from the June 01, 2022 edition of Country Life UK.
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