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Derek Frampton

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Derek in his Workshop, circa mid 1970s.

Even from an early age, Derek always showed a budding interest in wildlife and nature. Having struggled at school, due to his undiagnosed dyslexia, his favourite past times were drawing and painting, which quickly became his refuge. At the age of twelve, Derek found a dead bird in the gutter and took it home to sketch.  After a while it started to smell, which didn't please his mother, so reluctantly he had to throw it away. 

 

Needing something else to draw, Derek began exploring how he could preserve the specimens he brought home, so that he wouldn’t get in trouble with his mother again. His earliest taxidermy projects used steel ball-bearings for the eyes, as this was all that he could find around the house. As the birds were only intended for reference to paint and draw from, Derek didn’t think to paint the eyes, therefore all his earliest pieces of taxidermy had gleaming, metallic-coloured eyes. 

The revelation came once Derek realised that once preserved, the animals could be positioned however he desired. Revealing parts of the animal that would otherwise remain hidden, under the wings, inside the beak etc. This gave him plenty of new material to study for his sketches and taught him a deeper understanding of the anatomy of the birds.

After a couple of years, Derek’s interest shifted from drawing the birds, to perfecting the art of preparing the specimens themselves. The fascination was to get things looking as true to nature as possible. His new found passion led him to undertaking two years of work experience at Tring Natural History Museum, which provided him some respite from the mundane day to day of school life. At Tring he was immersed in a huge selection of animals from across the globe. There he studied the specimens in awe and in his spare time focused on improving his taxidermy at home. 

During his work experience, Derek met Roy Hale and Ian Hutchison, who were the resident taxidermists restoring the galleries at the time. After showing a keen interest in their work, they invited him down to the Natural History Museum’s taxidermy studios in Cricklewood, where he eagerly learnt how to professionally prepare specimens. With the correct tools and techniques under his belt, Derek’s taxidermy improved immeasurably, long gone were the days of ball-bearing-eyed birds. He began selling his work while still operating from his parents’ shed, even gaining recognition in a magazine for his work.

 

At sixteen, eager to leave school, Derek resented being part of the first class required to stay an extra year, preventing him from leaving at fifteen as he had intended. Not having much to show for his time at school academically, his teacher mocked that he would end up as a dustbin man or in prison! Undeterred, he focused on his passion for taxidermy, whist his mother pleaded with him to get a “proper job”, but there was no doubt in his mind that he had already found what he wanted to do. Shortly after leaving school, he moved out and began an apprenticeship with the Area Museum Services for the South of England in Colchester. Here he was able to hone his skills and got to work on larger mammals and fish for the first time. 

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The first Dodo reconstruction Derek made at just sixteen years old on the front cover of Modern Purchasing Magazine, 1974.

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During his seven years with the Area Museum Services, which relocated to Milton Keynes, Derek’s talent flourished. He eventually accepted a position with taxidermist Graham Teasdale in Sheffield. Just six months later, he received the coveted opportunity to work full-time at the Natural History Museum, the job he had always wanted.

 

Among his highlights working at the museum was taxidermying the famous ‘Guy the Gorilla’ alongside fellow taxidermists Barry Sutton and Arthur Haywood. Driven by an entrepreneurial spirit, Derek left the museum after just three years, to pursue his own freelance work full time.

 

Initially focusing mainly on the film industry, Derek’s work features in many popular films of the time, including Return to Oz and Santa Claus: The Movie. During this period, he pioneered erosion cast taxidermy, a technique previously unexplored in the UK. Whilst working on the reindeer for Santa Claus: The Movie he perfected this technique and went on to teach it to many other taxidermists, including Emily Mayer who further refined and extensively employed this technique in her own work.

During this time, Derek worked from a barn in Borne End, Hertfordshire, which he rented alongside some of his former colleagues from the Natural History Museum. Among them was John Coppinger, with whom he formed a partnership, when an opportunity to create dinosaur exhibits for the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Taiwan arose. After several years of spending long periods of time away from home, he decided to step back from these large international Museum projects and returned to ‘the barn’ to focus on taxidermy for private customers, museums and artists alike. 

 

The famous Guy the Gorilla on display at the Natural History Museum, circa 1982.

Eventually, he returned to Taiwan to work on several large dioramas with fellow taxidermist and model maker Steve Massam. During this time he relocated to Kings Langley in Hertfordshire.This move allowed him to work from home for the first time since his early days in his parents’ shed. Alongside Massam, he collaborated on extensive dioramas for the National Museum of Scotland while continuing to work in film and television. His work featuring in The Jungle Book, Harry Potter, and Midsomer Murders, Derek also had the privilege of being featured on BBC's The One Show as well as in Heston Blumenthal's Heston's Feasts.

 

Over the years Derek has given taxidermy demonstrations, classes and lectures at various institutions across the U.K. including The Natural History Museum, St. Martin's School of Art, The Royal College of Art, Roehampton University, Oxford University, The History of Science Museum and the Tate Modern. He has also privately tutored many aspiring and established taxidermists alike, sharing the skills and techniques he has acquired throughout his career.

 

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Derek with the dragon skeleton model he created for the Harry Potter films, circa 2000.

The wide breadth of knowledge and skills needed to master taxidermy crosses many disciplines. So much so, that Derek has featured in several lectures at Imperial College, London, led by Professor Roger Kneebone. These lectures aimed to help doctors and surgeons appreciate the importance of not over specialising and being able to draw upon skills from wider fields of study. This culminated in his inclusion in Professor Roger Kneebone’s 2021 book Expert: Understanding the Path to Mastery. More information on this work can be found here.

 

Derek has always had a fascination with extinct birds, this began in childhood with stories of the Dodo. Leading him to produce his first reconstruction of the bird, while still at school, out of turkey and goose feathers. Over the years, he has crafted several Dodo reconstructions, including the first “slim dodo” for Dr. Andrew Kitchener of the National Museum of Scotland. This work contributed to a scientific paper on the subject, challenging previous assumptions about the bird's physique. His dodo recreations are on permanent display in serval museums around the world including the Natural History Museum, Oxford University Museum, Manchester Museum as well as numerous private collections. His dodo reconstructions have also toured the world and have been featured in exhibitions at the V&A Museum as well as museums in China, Japan and Spain. 

 

In recent years, Derek has expanded his focus to include other extinct birds, these include reconstructions of the Great Auk, Carolina Parakeet, Liverpool Pigeon, Mauritius Blue Pigeon, Newton's Parakeet, and the Labrador Duck. You can read more about Derek’s work on reconstructing extinct birds here.

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Derek teaching a taxidermy class at Oxford University Museum, 2023. 

After more than 30 years in Kings Langley, in 2024 Derek decided to relocate to Holsworthy in Devon, to fulfil a lifelong desire to live by the coast, while still continuing his work. Throughout his career, Derek has received numerous awards and accolades for his work from the guild of taxidermists:

 

 

  • The first person to be awarded the title of Professional Membership of the Guild of taxidermists in 1980

  • Specialist in birds, mammals and fish

  • Master in birds

  • Best in Show for birds, 1981 and 1982

  • First place, Charles Waterton Bi-Centenary Award, 1983

  • Birds first place, 1983

  • Norfolk Trophy, 2003

  • Snowdonia Trophy, 2003

  • Themed Competition, 2017 and 2019

  • Best Professional Mammal, first, second and third place, 2019

  • Best Mammal, 2020

  • Breakthrough Magazine Award, 2020

 

You can read more about Dereks achievements here

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