A Visit With Walter Varcoe –
Articulated Equine Skeleton Specialist

A Kid in a Candy Store…

This field trip to visit kindred spirit Walter Varcoe, the Articulated Equine Skeleton Specialist, was equivalent to my being a kid in a candy store, in the middle of Walt Disney World, on Christmas Eve. As I drove out to his studio in New York, I truly wasn’t sure what to expect. It’s not every day that you meet someone who specializes in constructing displays of real horse skeletons, articulated in lifelike positions, with hand fabricated steel supports that basically disappear from view so you can simply take in the amazing view of the skeleton itself. Walter invited me into his private studio for the entire day, to search through literally thousands of bones and take as many photos as I could for future reference.

His collection consists of many treasures – from normal bones to the bones of juvenile animals with active growth plates and many bones with various degrees of disease pathology that you just don’t get to appreciate from viewing an x-ray. I was familiar with certain conditions, such as arthritis and ringbone, but they take on a different level of understanding when seen in person and held in your own two hands. As a horse owner, seeing some of the pathologies gave me a much better appreciation for what some horses may endure at the hands of man, and it brought my animal husbandry to a different level. In this blog entry I am sharing just a few of the amazing treasures I discovered during this trip, and I hope to visit Walter again in the future.