Skins/Hides: A Bengal Tiger Skin Rug (Panthera tigris tigris), dated 1935, by Van Ingen & Van Ingen, Taxidermists, Mysore, India, a superb adult Bengal Tiger skin, flat head with limbs outstretched, nose to tail 240cm, across the forelimbs 183cm, across the rear limbs 158cm, backed on to typical original khaki backing material, with dark blue scallop edged felt border, bearing worn Van Ingen care label, numbered to verso 21689, taken by John Gilbert Fawcett Esq, 18th 04th 1935, M.S.M. RY, Hubli, employee who worked on the Madras and South Mahratta railway (Madras to Mysore)

This Tiger Skin has remained in the original family ever since, and has never been available for sale previously. John Gilbert Fawcett was a Superintendent on the Madras and Southern Mahratta Railway (as noted in the Van Ingen order book entry) from 1930-39. WWII saw him posted to Bengal in order to develop the Assam rail LOC in support of General Slim’s 14th Army in Burma, he also served in Iraq & Persia before returning to a senior role in Calcutta. Settling and living at Hubli in Karnataka in the early 1930s spending his leisure time exploring and hunting in the area to the SW of Hubli including Yellapur, leaving India in 1946 and via Nyasaland eventually became the Assistant Director General of Rhodesia Railways. He retired in South Africa and died in 1994. John Gilbert Fawcett is photographed seated with a moustache and spaniel, also a black and white photograph depicting his own extensive hunting trophy collection, the majority if not all mounted by Van Ingen & Van Ingen, original black and white photograph copies kindly supplied by the family, not included in this lot