Scott Heiman achieves the marbled effect with his wall mounts
When hunting for food, our ancient ancestors ensured that it was not just the animal’s meat that was used in a meaningful way.
Highly respected and treated as a wellspring of life, a harvest would have multi-purposes – whether as food, shelter, clothing or relics. In this vein, the practice of displaying skulls for decoration, or even as structural components of dwellings, can be traced back to Cro-Magnon man’s use of mammoth bones 25,000 years ago.
Significant too, 11,000-year-old spiritualised deer masks have been discovered at a Mesolithic archaeological site in North Yorkshire, England. These artefacts are thought to be the oldest traces of shamanic and religious behaviour in the world.
In more recent history, the Native American culture is renowned for its skull art painting and petroglyphs carved onto skulls (including rocks, skins and teepees). Closer to home, the early tribes of the Balinese indigenous people are known for their exquisite carved and engraved designs on cow skulls. Once a cultural heritage of early peoples, this practice now fuels an export industry with Balinese cow and buffalo skull art respected all over the world.
In Western societies, the ancient symbology of skull art has largely faded from the modern psyche. However, vestiges remain. A well-crafted taxidermy speaks to the skill of its maker and the wealth of those who have sufficient disposal income to purchase them. When taxidermy proves too difficult, expensive ‑ or when a trophy just isn’t up to standard ‑ the skull of an animal will often be saved by hunters anyway, as a memento of a successful outing or an otherwise memorable moment.
So, what to do with these artefacts? Commonly we will place the skull cap or jaw on a shield. Whereas in America and Africa there is a frequent practice in saving the whole skull and bleaching it white – or painting it so and hanging it on the wall. This is so popular that there is a whole industry on skull mounting brackets which you can purchase on the web for about US$25.
But there’s an alternative method and it’s one that I particularly like because it adds so much character to the display. Specifically, my favourite way of presenting skull mounts with antlers or horns is to use a method that I call the marbled skull. Sure, it takes an investment in time and a few cans of spray paint, but I reckon it’s well worth the effort.
So, here’s a step-by-step guide on how to create a truly original display piece.
Step 1 – Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble
Remove the head from the body and take it back to camp ‑ or home ‑ with the rest of the harvest. Once the meat is packaged up and, in the fridge, and the skin is salted, boil the head in a 20L drum for 20-30 minutes. Then remove the skin, meat and eyeballs with a knife and use a coat hanger to mush up the brains.
Step 2 – Meat-eating ants
Locate a meat-eating ants’ nest and place the head on the site. For smaller skulls, cover them with a 20L drum (or plastic bucket) to protect them from scavenging birds and dogs. For larger skulls with antlers or horns, you’ll need a 44-gallon drum.
Place a suitably heavy rock or a couple of bricks on top of the inverted drum to stop it from being knocked over. The ants will devour most of the meat you couldn’t remove with the knife. Leave the drum in place for at least a few days or up to a week, depending on how much flesh you were initially able to remove from the skull.
This method works even better if you punch some holes in the drum. That way air – and other insects – can move in, meaning the meat will rot or be consumed more quickly.
Step 3 – Wash off
Any remaining sinew, and such, will now be dry so you will need to make it soft again by soaking it in water for a day or two until it washes off easily. You can use a ‘high pressure’ nozzle attachment to a garden hose, which does the trick nicely. When washing out the cranial cavity, don’t stand with the cavity pointing towards you or you will wear the remaining cranial contents as they wash out. Once you’re done, sit the skull in a shady spot outdoors to dry for a couple of days.
Step 4 – Prior preparation
For this part you will need that 20L drum again, some masking tape, a small stick (like a skewer) and 2-3 cans of different coloured spray paint in any colour you like. The epoxy enamels work well. Don’t forget too that you don’t have to buy new paint. Leftover cans in the garage will work just as well.
Next, mask up the horns/antlers/tusks so they won’t become wet or painted. Now fill the drum/bucket with water until it is 7-8cm from the top. Then comes the fun part…
Shake your spray cans vigorously. Spray paint onto the water’s surface ‑ in the centre of the bucket ‑ alternating colours every 10 seconds or so. Do this around five times for each colour as a minimum, but you can also use full cans if you wish.
Step 5 – The grand reveal
Once you’re finished with the paint, immerse your skull into the vessel – slowly – up to the point where the paint is just covering all of the skull and touching the bottom of the masking tape. Now grab your stick and swizzle the water surface gently to give it a marbled look (as distinct from the concentric rings you made when you were spraying-in the paint). Slowly lift the skull out of the vessel.
Take a quick look to see if you’re happy with the design. If you’re not, give the skull another dip and check it again (it may take a few goes). And if you’re still unhappy with the effect, simply shake the cans and start the bucket-spraying process all over again. Once dry you may like to give the antlers/horns a coat of clear paint to help them shine.
Voilà
Once you are done, all that’s left is to decide where to hang the skull mount. I find that deer skulls work well suspended in the corners of a room because of the barrelling shape of the spread. Remember too that the colour scheme you use today doesn’t have to be your ‘forever’ solution. Change the room’s curtains down the track and you can repaint the skulls to match.
Watch our SSAA TV video demonstration here.