Meet the Maker: Jazmine Miles-Long

For our latest Natural History Museum collaboration, we sat down with ethical taxidermist Jazmine Miles-Long to learn a little more about her unusual and fascinating work.

Jazmine first discovered taxidermy while volunteering at the Booth Museum of Natural History. She had originally thought she might work in museum conservation, but after trying taxidermy with the museum's curator, she found something she loved.

Today, Jazmine works only with animals that have died from natural causes. Her work goes far beyond preserving an animal's skin. She creates the sculpture beneath it, carefully recreating its shape and anatomy, as well as making plants and entire environments for museum displays.

It is a practice that brings together art, making and science.

Sometimes the work takes her beyond taxidermy altogether. She casts leaves from real plants, sculpts specimens from wax, and occasionally recreates animals entirely from scientific diagrams and photographs. As Jazmine herself wonders in our conversation, perhaps “wildlife artist” is sometimes a more fitting description.

It felt particularly appropriate to speak to Jazmine as part of our latest collaboration with the Natural History Museum, a collection inspired by animals, observation and the different ways we have recorded the natural world.

For our conversation, Jazmine wears the Palava x Natural History Museum Agnes Dodo Jacket and the Palava x Natural History Museum Florence Indigo Dodo Skirt.

And if you find Jazmine as fascinating as we do, join us in the Palava store for a talk where Jazmine will take us behind the scenes of her work. 

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