James Dickinson

James Arnold Dickinson, MBE, (born 1950, Leeds) is a British conservation-restoration taxidermist who repaired mounted animal skins and skeletons for museums in the United Kingdom for 40 years. Among his restoration works are the Leeds Irish elk, the Leeds polar bear (a "prized exhibit"), the Armley Hippo, and the Warrington seal (Warrington's "most famous animal"). Dickinson was a founder member of the Guild of Taxidermists, and was made a Member of the British Empire in 1990 for "services to taxidermy". He has been described as "an internationally renowned taxidermist". Background and training James Arnold Dickinson was born in Leeds in 1950. He recalled in 2008: "I used to collect bones, feathers and insects ever since I was a boy at school. During my A-levels in the 1960s, I saw an advert in a newspaper about a bursary for a taxidermist training course run by the Museums Association". Between 1968 and 1971 Dickinson trained at Bolton and Leicester Museums in the United Kingdom, having indeed received the bursary in 1968 from the Carnegie UK Trust and Museums Association. His mentors at Leicester were taxidermists Dick Hendry and Ted Williams. Following this, he studied in the museums of Germany and Switzerland, where he was shown practical taxidermy in the form of examples of historical specimens, between January and March 1972. In the same year he married Jean Howard, in Leeds.