Chicago Naturi 



Formerly Mi/(£ 



History Museum 



rTIN 



'Mviseum News 



Vol. 16 



MAY-JUNE, 1945 



Nos. 5-6 



SCIENCE AND ART APPLIED TO A "NOAH'S ARK" MINIATURE COLLECTION 



From the child who delights to play with 

 miniatures of grown-ups' things, to the 

 serious architect or engineer who envisions 

 great works from small scale models, the 

 utility of objects portrayed in reduced size 

 has seldom been questioned by anyone. 

 Miniatures of all kinds, quite apart from 

 their possible artistic merit, appeal to our 

 imagination and ingrained whimsicality. 



This mood is the source of much of the 

 amusement and pleasure derived from stories 

 like those of Lewis Carroll, or even from the 

 satirical tale of Gulliver's "Voyage to Lilli- 

 put," and is the first reaction to the collec- 

 tion of "Animals in Miniature" which was 

 placed on exhibition in Carl E. Akeley 

 Memorial Hall (Hall 22) April 4, to remain 

 untilJune4. Arrange- 

 ments to bring them 

 here were made by 

 Mr. Orr Goodson, 

 Acting Director, when 

 the models aroused 

 great public interest 

 during a similar tem- 

 porary exhibit at the 

 American Museum of 

 Natural History, New 

 York, earlier in the 

 year. Widely circu- 

 lated national maga- 

 zines and newspaper 

 magazine supplements 

 have published feature 

 articles on the unique 

 collection. 



The models are the 

 work of Louis Paul 

 Jonas, well-known 



taxidermist and sculptor, who was formerly 

 a member of the staff of the American 

 Museum. In recent years he has been a 

 free-lance artist with his own studio engaged 

 in the preparation of exhibits for museums 

 and other organizations in various parts 

 of the country. 



Ever since sculptured manikins replaced 

 excelsior and tow "stuffing" in the modem 

 taxidermist's bag of tricks, miniature scale 

 models of a projected individual mount or 

 habitat group have been made as studies 

 for the finished work. Mr. Jonas, in his 

 career as a leading taxidermist and sculptor. 



"Come listen, my men, while I tell you again 



The five unmistakable marks 



By which you may know, wheresoever you go. 



The warranted genuine Snarks. 



" .... It next will be right 



To describe each particular batch: 



Distinguishing those that have feathers, and bite, 



From those that have whiskers, and scratch." 



From The Hunting of the Snark, by Lewis Carroll. 



preserved his sketches of this kind, adhered 

 to a uniform scale of one-tenth life-size for 

 all his pieces, carried the work to a higher 

 degree of finish than customary, and thus 



AFRICAN BLACK BUCK PURSUED BY A CHEETAH 



One of the miniatures by Louis Paul Jonas, on special exhibition in Carl Akeley Memorial Hall (Halt 22) 



built up a collection that is unique. 



The collection is certainly the most exten- 

 sive of its kind, although the number of 

 mammals represented is but a fraction of 

 those known. It also excels in the accuracy 

 and craftsmanship with which individual 

 pieces have been made. 



In developing his collection of animals in 

 miniature, Mr. Jonas has had its possible 

 educational use in mind. One of the prob- 

 lems he had to solve was that of a satis- 

 factory casting material to give lightness, 

 durability, and relatively low cost to the 

 models, because it was foreseen that class- 



room use would involve much handling of 

 the models and consequent risk of breakage 

 if they were reproduced in any of the 

 standard materials. The answer was found 

 in various formulations of self-vulcanizing 

 rubber latex with which hollow casts may 

 be made in plaster of Paris molds. Such 

 casts have the strength and flexibility of a 

 rubber doll and yet may express a fidelity to 

 nature that only an experienced artist- 

 taxidermist could give. 



With this technical difficulty disposed of, 

 the usefulness of accurately made scale 

 models of animals for instructional purposes 

 became greatly enhanced. With a compre- 

 hensive collection of such models, it is 

 possible to make easily seen and understood 

 arrangements in a 

 small space to illus- 

 trate various aspects 

 of animal relation- 

 ships, from general 

 appearance to taxo- 

 nomic position, geo- 

 graphic distribution, 

 and ecological rela- 

 tionships. 



Even in a large 

 museum with great 

 exhibition space and 

 tremendous resources 

 in material, it is physi- 

 cally impossible to 

 bring full-sized speci- 

 mens in sufficiently 

 close association to 

 make all of these rela- 

 tionships apparent 

 and clear to the aver- 

 age visitor who, it is feared, often fails 

 to grasp the significance of the way exhibits 

 are arranged in some museum halls. For 

 this reason the animals of the Jonas collec- 

 tion have been arranged in conventional 

 systematic order for exhibition despite the 

 fact that the Museum has two large halls 

 devoted to the same purpose. Beginning 

 with the marsupials, typified by the kanga- 

 roo, and ending with the gorilla to illustrate 

 the primates, seven orders and nineteen 

 families of mammals are represented by the 

 sixty-five separate models of the collection. 

 Five years ago, the N. W. Harris Public 



