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Famed Paris curiosity shop is reborn out of the ashes



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Famed Paris curiosity shop is reborn out of the ashes
cyrano Offline
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Famed Paris curiosity shop is reborn out of the ashes

By JENNY BARCHFIELD

PARIS — The fire's survivors were a motley crew: A parrot, a peacock and a baboon. All of them stuffed.

Now, after the devastating blaze, the animals' home, famed Parisian taxidermy store Deyrolle, is rising like a phoenix from the ashes. An auction this week at Christie's Paris will raise funds to help restore the 177-year-old shop to its former glory.

Ninety percent of the store's stock went up in smoke, said owner Prince Louis Albert de Broglie of the Feb. 1 fire.

Gone were the store's antique Nile perch skeleton and its famed fossil collection. Gone, too, the cabinets full of brilliant butterflies and exotic birds that attracted generations of painters and sealed the store's reputation as a haven for artists.

Several rooms of the sprawling, multilevel store — located in the heart of the chic Saint Germain des Pres neighborhood — have already been restored and reopened for business, and the animals are multiplying. A pack of tigers pads across the shining hardwood floors and an albatross bursts into flight.

The taxidermy studio, once housed in a still-unrestored wing, has been moved off site. The taxidermists now work from home.

Most of the animals for sale at Deyrolle died of natural causes in zoos, wildlife parks and circuses across Europe, though the store also mounts the occasional hunter's trophy.

They used to take special orders from bereaved pet owners, but de Broglie has put a stop to that.

"I was sick of these little old ladies who would come to us in tears when Fifi died but by the time they were supposed to pick him up, changed their minds," he said. Before the fire, dozens of abandoned cats and dogs had long been gathering dust in the basement.

Deyrolle's longevity turned it into a Paris institution that stood, virtually unchanged, as a reminder of a bygone era even as the capital evolved and Saint Germain des Pres turned into one of the city's most exclusive shopping hubs.

Interior decorators are now among the store's main clients, snapping up items that range in price from about $39 for a butterfly to as much as $32,000 for a lion.
11-13-2008 07:24 AM
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