Twenty years ago I bought an antique carved salmon. The thing fascinated me, and as events unfolded, forever changed my life...

Fish models carved in half relief originated in Britain in the late 19th century. To me they seem an extension of the angling still life canvases (dead fish on the shore) done by Victorian artists. John Russell was just such a painter with one important difference. He also began carving fish in half relief and painting them as if they were canvases. Consequently they were an interesting hybrid of the carving's obvious dimensional character and the trompe l'oeil painting surface of a flat canvas. From John Russell came a second generation of carvers and painters who worked for Farlows. This venerable tackle establishment featured a page in it's early catalogs advertising trophy carvings. Send in a tracing and descriptive details and John Tully, Russell's son in law, would carve a replica of the catch on a panel with a lettered legend of the catch details.

During fishing tackle's "Golden Age" of split cane rods, ivory handled reels, and accoutrements that trod a thin line between function and art, carved trophy fish reigned. Makers working for the three major British tackle firms of Hardy, Malloch, and Farlow produced them until WW II's outbreak. As Britain became rightfully preoccupied with matters of her very existence during those dark times, the finery of sporting's golden age faded into the mist of the Old Empire. By 1940, a few years after John Tully's death, trophy fish carving seemed headed for relic status.

...Twenty years ago I carved fish number one. Friends like Hoagy Carmichael and Ron Swanson provided the initial encouragement and inspiration and so far, at least in regard to the tradition of trophy fish carving, the British Empire's sun has not yet gone down.