A silver mounted polar bear skull with gaping jaws and three removable silver beakers. 25 cm high, 31 cm long

The skull was part of the Archive of Gordon Burt, OBE (Christie’s Australia, 28 November 1996, Lot 472). Gordon Burt was the Engineer on the 1925 British Arctic Expedition to Svalbard and Franz-Josef Land, the last Expedition to this region in a Sailing Ship. The Expedition was jointly led by Frank Worsley, a New Zealander, who had been with Shackleton in the Antarctic, and Grettin Alganson, a Canadian of Icelandic descent. In photographs of polar bears from the Expedition, Burt captioned on one: “These animals were not shot for sport; fresh meat is an antidote for scurvyâ€, and records in his diary as “working on skins and skullsâ€. ♦