Book of the moment: Skulls
Skulls, an exploration of Alan Dudley's curious collection
Simon Winchester
Black Dog & Leventhal, 2012
ISBN-13: 978-1-57912-912-5
A beautiful book. It celebrates bone, with photographs that
revel in the curve and the line, the sharp edges and deep shadows that make skulls
so captivating.
Skulls is as rich and as stark as the bones it holds. There is minimal
text. For each skull, we get the basic zoological information and that's it.
But that's all that's needed. I find myself drawn in, turning pages, skeletal
browsing and brooding a bit. The collection itself presented is intriguing.
These are all from the collection of a single man. Alan Dudley has a collection
of 2,000 skulls and a passion for collecting that eventually brought him into
court with a handful of skulls that had slipped into his possession in breach
of international and national law
A reminder not to lose one's own perspective perhaps. But
then, open the book and revere the animals brought to you here, through the
temples of their bones and be inspired.
Natural History Book Shop - you could get a copy here
Black Dog and Leventhal - publishers
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| my own bones tend to end a bit more festive than the beauties in this book |
