I love drawing animals, and I love reading and thinking about our relationship with them. So it was an absolute thrill to be part of another book project that opens up all sorts of questions and conversations about animals, this time focussed on the charismatic and ubiquitous pig.
Zooarchaeologist Pia Spry-Marqués brings a really interesting angle to her book PIG/PORK – she takes the reader right back to some of our earliest interactions between wild boar and humans, traces the evolution of different species and breeds, and shares some fascinating stories and case studies that highlight the idiosyncrasies in our relationships with our porcine friends.
I read the manuscript and made a list of suggestions for chapter heading illustrations which Pia and Anna at Bloomsbury and I developed. You can see each image below.
The fierce-looking wild Babirusa is found in Indonesia.
Japanese Dogu style sculpture of a boar.
Chinese Min pig, lying in front of his sty to echo the Mandarin character for home.
Gloucestershire Old Spot pig and a swill bucket.
Glow in the dark pig, from genetic experiments giving pigs bio-luminescent genes.
The tapeworm, a parasite often found in pork.
Suckling piglets.
A cow hoof, pig’s trotter and goat’s hoof.
Tuscan pig on a marble plinth in the alps where Lardo is made from their fat.
Pig 311. This was one of the most incredible stories in the book – a pig escaped a boat full of animals that was near a nuclear test site in the ’50s, and swam for freedom.
Wild boar investigating an outstretched human hand.
