The Endangered Species Collection
“When I lived in Bristol, working in the stop frame animation industry, I used to go to the local zoo at weekends to do life drawing.
One afternoon, I saw a young blind girl pressing herself against the glass, bursting with curiosity, asking her mum how big the animals were, exactly what they looked like and so on. A seed was planted in my mind that day: How can I use my skills to help?”
- André Masters.
‘The Endangered Species Project’ was born in 1998 when André Masters decided to make paw casts of domestic cats and dogs, as well as large exotic animals so children and adults alike could compare their size and texture to casts of lions, tigers, primates and many other endangered animals which would be far too dangerous to touch in real life.
“I have been very fortunate to work with Chessington World of Adventures, Woburn Safari Park, and recently, the WWF and Maidstone Museum to make the very rare and precious casts of these incredible animals which I have made into tactile teaching aids for blind and partially sighted audiences as part of a completely self-funded, non-profit project.
Touch is one of the first and most important senses we develop as babies to explore our world and is hugely underepresented in the art world.”
As well achieving his dream of making these fascinating tools for the Blind Community, André recognised the inherent beauty of the textures he had collected, and now makes objets d’arts and functional art objects such as door plaques from The Endangered Species Collection in precious and semi-precious metals.
The sale of these beautiful bespoke objects to collectors and animal lovers continues the funding of the overall project, with the long term aim being a larger collection forming a touring exhibition that could be taken to schools for the Blind and international museums so that as many people as possible may access this experience.
If you are interested in commissioning or purchasing items from the collection; or if you work with animals and would like to have your animals cast; or if you own or run a venue or educational establishment and would be interested in exhibiting the collection in the future, please get in touch.
