Today, February 1, 2011, is the birthday of researcher Gordon Rutter.

In 2006, Edinburgh’s Scotsman highlighted one of my favorite person’s cabinet of curiosities. Gordon Rutter is a specialist in the weird world of Fortean wonders and cryptozoological artifacts. A mycologist (yep, a mushroom and fungus expert) by trade, having worked in museums during his career, Gordon nowadays is a teacher and writer living in Scotland. It was with Gordon that my sons (Malcolm & Caleb) and I stayed in 1999, before our trek took us onward to Loch Ness.

Gordon Rutter is seated in the back, in this photo taken during a past Loch Ness Monster Convention, 1999. Photo Credit: Alison Clayton.

The Scotsman overviewed (in 2006) Rutter’s collection of about 100 weird and strange items in his personal cabinet of artifacts:

When you walk into the front room of Gordon Rutter’s Edinburgh flat, the sofa’s there, but squeezed between his one-eyed pig, his feejee mermaid, his skull collection and of course – the must-have for every cryptozoologist Scot – a miniature Loch Ness Monster. For Rutter is one of a dying breed of gentlemen-collectors – people who hunt down and collect the unusual, the different, if we’re being honest … the downright weird….His living room is home to things as diverse as a ten-legged spider, a petrified teddy bear, a shrunken head (banished to the hall as it smells), a couple of mermaids and a cast of his own teeth.

The following photograph shows some of Gordon’s items (including a replica of the Piltdown skull up front), not published with the story:

The article continues, mentioning his jackalope and a fur-bearing trout, and moving on to other items in his collection:

…fossilized fingers, rings that belonged to (real) giants, a painted bowl made from a human skull, an ostrich egg mounted on an ostrich foot (‘why not?’), plus a whole lot of other weird things…He has now become well-known as a collector of the unusual and people come to him with the offer of items for sale. He is presently mulling over whether or not to buy a seven-legged lamb – a bit pricey at £1,500 – but found himself unable to resist his latest acquisition, a genuine Cyclops piglet….The little pig, with its freaky single eye, sits beside his computer screen, under the jackalope (half rabbit/half deer) and close to his stuffed crocodile.

As opposed to a “dying breed” of gentlemen (and a few gentlewomen) collectors, I actually think that Gordon and I (now publicly exhibited in the International Cryptozoology Museum) are two examples of a new growing breed, stimulated by personal collections, contacts, and online sources, of the new trend of gatherers of such curiosities.

Photographs by Gordon Rutter. Copyright 2006, 2011. Permissions granted.