A Bug’s Death

Terra House owner and taxidermist Morly Tse turns the preservation of insects into an art form

By Lauren James

If it weren’t for the journey through an industrial building required to reach it, Terra House could fool visitors into thinking they’d travelled back in time to the study of some eccentric professor in 19th-century Europe. The small Kwai Fong workshop is packed with curios, including amber bottles, a glass phrenological head, dried plants and boxes upon boxes of insects behind glass. Butterflies are Morly Tse’s speciality, but amid the framed and domed displays of glittering lepidoptera there are also cicadas and beetles great and small. Tse, the 26-year-old proprietress, taxidermist and artist behind Terra House, trained on mammals in the UK before turning her talents to the insect world. Tse’s is an unusual craft in Hong Kong, where no other businesses offer animal or insect taxidermy and there are few public…

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Tatler Hong Kong (Digital) - 1 Issue, October 2020

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