Bison Skull, Blank

A bison skull that never belonged to a bison, and does not pretend to be anything else.

The specimen, not the artwork

Clean bone. Sutures tracking across the frontal and around the orbit, the tooth row, the ridged horn. Nothing added and nothing carved, which is exactly why it reads as something out of a collection rather than something out of a shop.

It is also the honest answer for anyone weighing up a real skull. All of the object and none of the animal, without the beetle cleaning, the permits, the weight or the smell.

The carved one is SPECIMEN 005

Same skull with the surface broken into plates like cracked ground. If you want the piece that catches a lamp and throws shadows into itself, that is the one.

The horns are left alone on purpose

Smooth ridged horn against the face is the contrast that makes the piece work. It is also the honest choice, because horn does not crack the way ground does.

Why it is not a longhorn

A longhorn is horizontal. All span, all wall. A bison is vertical mass, all forehead, and it wants a different spot in a different room. It is also far more sensible to send, because a 620 millimetre horn span is billed on volume and this is not.

Never an animal

No bone, no beetle cleaning, no import permit, no smell, and nothing died for it. It weighs what a printed object weighs, a fraction of the real thing, and it will not yellow in a hot room the way real bone does.

How it sits

Free standing. There is no hanger and no bracket in the box. A wall mounted version is coming, and if that is the one you want, say so and you will be first to know.

Looking after it

Out of direct sun, because PLA softens around 60 degrees. Dust with a soft dry brush rather than a cloth. Lift it by the skull, not by the horns.

The numbers

• Printed in sections and bonded in Australia, then finished by hand.
• SPECIMEN 004. That number belongs to this design and will never be given to another.
• Dimensions to be confirmed.

How it is made

Modelled from scratch, printed here on our own machines, then cleaned up, finished and packed by hand. Nothing is outsourced and nothing is cast, so every piece carries faint layer lines and no two come out quite identical. We could sand those out. We would rather you could see it was made than see it was manufactured.

PLA, which is a corn-starch derived plastic. It is rigid, it holds fine detail better than almost anything else at this price, and it has one weakness worth knowing: it softens at around 60 degrees. A sunny windowsill in February is the one place it should never live.

Ordering one now

Everything here is made to order. Nothing sits in a box waiting, which is why you are not paying for a warehouse. Order it and yours goes into the next batch, usually within a fortnight, and you are emailed when it goes on the bed and again when it ships.

Change your mind before it is printed and we refund it in full without asking why. After that you still have every right you have under Australian Consumer Law, which we cannot exclude and would not want to.