This thread here http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=170155 got me remembering an old cartoon I saw many years ago. In the cartoon, a safari hunter was in his den, surrounded by exotic animal parts such as stuffed heads on the walls and lion skin rugs and so on. Anyway, there was also an umbrella stand which was made out of the lower leg/foot of an elephant.
Did these things really exist?
A friend of mine has (or had - I haven’t seen it for years) an occasional table that is made from the leg of an elephant, topped with a wooden disc.
Although a quick Google leads me to the tentative conclusion that what I saw was a fake made of fibreglass.
I’m pretty sure that the real things used to be made though.
There’s what appears to be a genuine one on this page.
Sickenlingly, yes, they actually did make such things.
On the bright side, most elephant-foot stands that you see are replicas made of wood, or, nowadays, plastic, painted to look real, because people think they’re kitschy and funny. Something along the same lines as fake bearskin rugs, I guess.
Trading bits of endangered animals these days is illegal, naturally:
Wow Mangetout, there are some pretty sick “collectibles” being sold on that site. I mean, a sitting chair supported by zebra legs! Inkwells made out of hoofs!
I mean, I dont mind things like zebra skin rugs, after all, zebras are not endangered. But when they start making macabre items out of animal parts, especially endangered animals, that crosses the line.
I found this link to a story about a famous elephant foot umbrella stand – from an elephant shot by Teddy Roosevelt. Evidently, it was a big thing to do for the Great White Hunters on safari in the early 20th century.
Wow Mangetout, there are some pretty sick “collectibles” being sold on that site. I mean, a sitting chair supported by zebra legs! Inkwells made out of hoofs!
I mean, I dont mind things like zebra skin rugs, after all, zebras are not endangered. But when they start making macabre items out of animal parts, especially endangered animals, that crosses the line.
Wow Mangetout, there are some pretty sick “collectibles” being sold on that site. I mean, a sitting chair supported by zebra legs! Inkwells made out of hoofs!
I mean, I dont mind things like zebra skin rugs, after all, zebras are not endangered. But when they start making macabre items out of animal parts, especially endangered animals, that crosses the line.
Oooops!
I happen to think they’re all pretty sick myself. Perhaps the worst one I ever heard of was an ashtray that had been made from the hand of a gorilla.
Stands were also made from the feet of rhinos and hippos. These kitsch items are of interest as a footnote in the history of great practical jokes; there are numerous stories–some well-documented–of how a hoaxer convinced people, at least temporarily, that a monster had crawled out of a lake or stream by making prints with an umbrella stand.
By the way, if an award was given for the most remarkable piece of taxidermical furniture, I would nominate a chair which frontiersman Grizzly Adams sent to President Andrew Johnson. It was made out of a grizzly bear, with the head serving as the end of one of the arm rests. Johnson put it in the oval office.
Johnson also had a tea kettle which looked like a steam locomotive, and made a sound just like a train whistle when it came to a boil. One gets the feeling that the White House in his days looked a little like the mansion of the Addams family.
Whatever his merits or demerits as a president, I suspect he was a fun guy.
A famous prankster (can’t remember his name, but he was someone reknowned for his pranks) made people at his college think that a rhino had escaped from the zoo when he made rhino tracks going to a local pond in the snow using a rhino-foot umbrella stand.
Super pedantic nitpick highjack… The Oval Office didn’t exist until many years later… He must have had it in his office in the White House proper…
(The management apologize for this distraction; the person responsible has been sacked.)
Trinopus
I used to work at a local zoo. They had a chest full of that kind of stuff. In fact, one of the things in it was an elephant-foot umbrella stand. They also had a shellaqued (sp?) sea turtle, sea lion furs, canned turtle meat, all sorts of things. They were used in childrens’ classes on conservation and endangered species.
In one of Gary Larson’s “Far Side” cartoons, an elephant, standing upright but on crutches, one of his rear feet gone and the stump bandaged, is standing in an elephant-sized telephone booth in the middle of an African plain. He says into the receiver, “What? They turned it into a WASTEbasket?”
For some reason Gary caught heat from animal-rights groups about this.
My parents actually have an elephantfoot-umbrella stand at home…they purchased it way back in the seventies when people didn’t care that much about endangered species and such.
It’s nasty to touch - with these hard long hairs sticking out of it…yes elephants have hairy legs
I see elephant/rhino feet on eBay ever so often. I guess if they are over a certain age (pre-something) you can sell them there. I’ve also seen rhino horn up for auction.
A friend of my mother had one in her flat. Nasty thing. It was obviously old (probably inherited or something) though.