Animal house

Jerzy Linkowski keeps three pelicans in his crowded garage. He also has a couple of wild pigs, some pheasants, a few pike and an antelope or two.

The adjoining back room is even more crowded: animals from as far away as Africa rub feathers, hooves and whither with beasts from Australia, Canada and Siberia.

"My wife won't let me take any of them upstairs in to the house," Linkowski said as he proudly surveyed his glassy-eyed menagerie.

Linkowski is a taxidermist - one of Poland's few specialists who can treat, stuff and mount animal skins to create lifelike replicas. He studied zoology in Poland, then specialized in taxidermy in Holland, Germany and the former Czechoslovakia. Later he landed a job at the Polish Academy of Science's Zoology Institute, working his way up to the position of exhibition director. He and his team of three taxidermists were responsible for organizing new animal displays every three months. But by the 1980s, with the Polish economy in crisis, funding for such activities had dried up.

"And I thought it was a waste of time to sit at work and drink my coffee and read the paper, so I decided to start my own business," Linkowski said.

He named his company Animal and Hunting Trophy Preparation Workshop and these days Linkowski is kept busy completing up to 100 projects a year. His biggest subject was a nine-meter whaleshark for a Dutch oceanarium.

One of Linkowski's attractions for customers, apart from his know-how, is the price he charges. His rates are about half those charged in European Union (EU) countries, at about zł. 1,200 for a big animal, such as a deer, which requires around three days to complete. Works-in-progress stare silently from his workshop floor and two giant deep freezers hold more skins that wait for his life-giving touch. In the garage, a stack of boxes holds Linkowski's latest shipment from Africa; most of these skins were trophies shot by Polish hunters on safari vacations. This type of work is a new market, which Linkowski - himself an avid hunter - has seen emerge and grow during the past six years.

"The taxidermy market has become quite good in Poland because more businessmen now have money to go abroad and some of them are choosing to go on hunting trips to Africa or Canada," Linkowski said. "Before (the fall of communism) it was really difficult for Poles to go abroad, let alone to go hunting abroad because not many people could afford to do it. But now it's the rich people who can go."

Linkowski knows of one Polish safari club with 80 members who regularly go hunting in Africa, and other locations such as Russia, Canada, Mongolia and Scotland. He'll soon be receiving more local work with Poland's deer-hunting season due to open.

And although museum clients still account for a small percentage of Linkowski's projects, with the Polish economy once again facing a crisis he believes this type of work will shrink even more. He also predicts that private clients will become more reticent to spend on such frivolous things as having their record-breaking giant trout stuffed.

There is, however, one area of work that Linkowski has always declined - stuffing people's pet cats and dogs, although he has done pet iguanas, rats and even toads.

"I usually say to these people, you've got a photo of your cat or dog, just bury the animal and remember them as they were because what I create is not going to be your pet; it's not going to be your animal, it will be something artificial."

But artificial is not a word that comes easily to Linkowski's lips. He considers himself an artist who takes his work seriously, striving to create animals that look as lifelike as possible.

"The three most important things my job requires are first, I need to love my job. Second, I need manual or artistic skills and the third is knowledge of the animals and their bodies."

When Linkowski started receiving orders for African animals, he traveled to South Africa so he could observe the animals in their natural environment. He takes photos and sketches of the animals he works on and a stack of nature magazines and reference books in his office also provide inspiration.

Up until the 1990s, he used to build his own models and create his own life-size animal forms out of clay, which were then used to make molds for the skins. A single project could take as long as three months. These days, his job is easier, and faster, thanks to the availability of ready-made plastic forms, which he orders from Austria and Holland. Over these he stretches the skins, and attaches the skull. On his work table are a couple of sets of plastic fangs, stitching needles and various other nasty-looking tools of the trade.

"But," he said raising his strong hands, "these are the best tools I use."

Celia Barnes