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Justin honed his now much more professional technique mostly through trial and error, he says. We bought a bunch of knives and we just-“ So we just scooped it up, put it in a bag, threw it in the trunk, and came home. “One day we were driving to go out to dinner,” Justin recounts, “and we saw this groundhog that had been hit on the road. The couple’s interest in pursuing taxidermy professionally grew out of their own collecting, then rapidly developed into a passion for preserving creatures that might otherwise have been left in the woods to decompose. The wide array of specimens on display is especially impressive considering that Justin, a self-taught taxidermist, has only been mounting and preserving animals since last August. A languid iguana, a smart silver fox, and a nervy squirrel congregate in a ghostly jungle, scrutinizing one another through glass eyes. The tiled floor is similarly crowded with smaller mounts. I want everything to be tasteful.” The bright green leaves of smooth aloe and spiky spider plants peek insistently from behind oblong jars filled with floating animal parts stacked in snaking lines along the walls of the shop: hearts, lungs, eyeballs, paws, and brains hang submerged in a secret mixture of formaldehyde and other preserving chemicals. Alaina’s touch can be seen in the interior decorating.
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“Justin does more of the gory stuff, he has the permits,” she says, referencing Justin’s role as RIP’s resident taxidermist, as well as the licenses issued from the state of Virginia that allow Rest In Pieces to legally sell taxidermy mounts and furs. She employs a soft color palette of grayish blues, gentle blacks, and cool pinks, bringing the unique details of her subjects to the fore rather than sensationalizing the practice by which they came to be. In them, Alaina’s immaculate, almost scientific, photographs highlight subjects from ram skulls to preserved fetal pigs. She handcrafts delicate bone jewelry from the animals that Justin preserves and curates RIP’s thriving social media accounts.
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Her serious demeanor is undercut by her genuine laugh, revealing a macabre-yet-goofy sense of humor. “We’ll be in here setting up and people come by and they’re peeking in the windows,” says Justin, miming the awe-struck stare of a befuddled window-gazer, “and I’ll go out and give them a business card and they’ll be like, ‘Oh, I follow you guys online! I can’t wait for this to open!’” Justin, ebullient and gregarious, is just the kind of approachable guy you’d hope might emerge from a dimly lit storefront filled with embalmed fetal armadillos and snarling stuffed opossums.Īlaina, slight and well-spoken, prefers to work behind the scenes. Confident in their initial successes, Justin and Alaina decided to make the leap from digital to physical: on May 23, they hosted the grand opening of their new brick-and-mortar storefront.Įven during the store’s buildout, interest was in steady supply. From its first incarnation as an Etsy shop, the business quickly morphed into a thriving online store supported by Richmond’s close-knit community of weirdoes, punks, and art lovers, organically nurturing their own off-kilter retail niche. These twin sentinels safeguard the entrance to the city’s first and only shop specializing in taxidermy pieces, wet specimens, and antique oddities: Rest In Pieces.Ĭo-owners Justin Torone and Alaina Gearhart founded Rest In Pieces about a year ago. Her clean white fur covers a lean muscular torso, topped with large bat-like ears set behind two round red eyes, one back leg lifted in a tense stance as if readying herself to dash off into the forest. A regal albino deer accompanies him, surveying the sidewalk from her side of the window. His yellow head is turned delicately over his shoulder as if self-consciously shielding his eyes from peeping passersby. His thick hoofs are arranged on a bed of sticks and moss supporting a shaggy cylindrical body of tousled red-brown fur. From behind the panes, a shy chamois peers out.
REST IN PIECES WINDOWS
Nestled in the heart of Richmond’s bustling Fan district, two stately plate glass windows frame the black-trimmed storefront at 1 South Stafford Avenue.