Kendall House Antiques Ltd. has dated this piece to the 1900s.
The legend from that county says that “King Arthur did not die but was transformed into a red-billed chough”.
Frederick Coburn (1840s-1914) was a taxidermist based on Holloway Head in Birmingham in the late 19th & Early 20th Century. He was also an active ornithologist who recorded many rare bird sightings throughout the late 19th century.
Coburn documented the local wildlife in his 1895 work, “The Ornithology of the City of Birmingham”. His writing captured the rich natural environment of the area around the turn of the 20th century, describing it as a place with extensive woodlands, farmland, and a variety of birds like skylarks, nightingales, and barn owls. Coburn's observations provide a valuable historical record of the pre-industrial landscape, which was soon impacted by urban expansion and habitat loss.
F Coburn appears in the “Transactions of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists’ Society” in 1892 and made several contributions to “The Zoologist” between 1897 and 1902.
There appears to be little known about this maverick taxidermist, I certainly have never owned one of his cased before, and yet his work is of the finest quality, and interestingly is very similar to Peter Spicers work from just down the road in Royal Leamington Spa. The case is of identical construction, the modelling of the bird is brave, and the way he has signed his name on a pebble internally is also very much in the manner of Spicer.
I believe there is a connection here, whether he is a distant relative, trained at Spicers or just admired there work to such a point he slavishly copied it, we might never know. Certainly, whilst collecting taxidermy by P Spicer and researching my book ‘A Record of Spicer’s’ (published back 2001) I have not personally come across F. Coburn before. Now a hundred and sixteen years later we will probably never find out, who Francis Coburn really was, but what we do now know for sure is that this was a very talented taxidermist indeed.
If any one does know more, then I would love to hear about it.
Kendall House Antiques Ltd. has dated this piece to the 1900s.
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Taxidermy- Cornish Chough by F. Coburn. Dated 1908
