A Large Pair of Fine c.1920 Mounted Taxidermy Scandinavian Reindeer Antlers

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Origin: Scandinavian
Period: Early Twentieth Century
Provenance: Unknown
Date: c.1920
Height: 29 inches (at maximum)
Width: 22.5 inches (at maximum)
Depth: 28 inches (at maximum)
Mount Width: 7 inches

The large Scandinavian reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) dark stained antlers on cut frontlet having twenty one points, mounted on the original wood shield survives from the first quarter of the twentieth century.

The condition of the whole is very good with both the antlers and shield in very good preserved condition. The antlers were dark stained at a slightly later date, though not recently, and do serve to give the antlers a more dramatic decorative feel. The screws that are holding the mount onto the shield are later replacements.

The reindeer (Rangifer tarandus), also known as the caribou in North America, is a species of deer native to Arctic and Subarctic regions. The reindeer travels the furthest of any land mammal with these migrations often containing thousands of reindeer. The caribou of North America can run at speeds up to 50 mph and can travel as many as 3,000 miles a year and reindeer are the only known mammals that can see ultraviolet light.

In most populations both sexes grow antlers and it is the only cervid species in which females grow them as well as males. In the Scandinavian populations, old males' antlers fall off in December, young males' fall off in the early spring, and females' fall off in the summer. The antlers typically have two separate groups of points, a lower and upper. On average, the bull reindeer's antlers are the second largest of any extant deer, after the moose. In the largest races, the antlers of big males can range up to 100 cm (39 in) in width and 135 cm (53 in) in beam length. They have the largest antlers relative to body size among living deer species.

Early taxidermy with hefty decorative appeal.

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