Mr. Viquesney Buys Some Monkey Fur; 1931

Ernest Moore “Dick” Viquesney, E. M. for short, is one of Owen County’s most famous native sons. A sculptor, his enduring fame comes from his Doughboy statue depicting a World War I soldier stands in at least 136 locations across 35 states including in front of the Owen County Courthouse and Soldier’s Field in Chicago.

            Aside from being an artist, E.M. Viquesney was an intrepid businessman. Beyond the popular cast plaques and statues he sold in varying sizes, including his popular Abraham Lincoln series, and the Spanish-style Tivoli movie theater he built and operated with his second wife, Betty, he   starting the Imp-O-Luck Company where in 1925 a ten foot electrified Imp-O-Luck stood boldly facing the Courthouse atop his signature building on what was once known as the Viquesney Block in Downtown Spencer, Indiana.

            A newspaper article from the August 21, 1931 edition of the Spencer Evening World gives us a glimpse of another business proposition E.M. Viquesney was considering. The headline reads, “Monkey Skins Cause Furore At “Imp” Office,” with the subhead contributing, “Shipment from South Africa to E. M. Viquesney is greatly admired.”

            It seems Mr. Viquesney had previously advertised “four black monkey skins which he was going to receive from the Gold Coast of south Africa,” for sale but when the pelts were received, Mr. Viquesney admired them so much he decided to keep them for his first wife, Cora, who would die two years later of diphtheria.   

            “And no one can blame him,” the Evening World informs us, “they are really very beautiful. Glistening black hair or fur is about five inches long, while the skins themselves are from two and a half to three feet long and about half as wide.”

            The Evening World goes on to explain, “The skins are native tanned and include only that portion taken from the back of the animal which forms a sort of mane. Judging by the skins of the animals should be quite a bit larger than ordinary type of monkey which we are familiar.”

            I am not quite sure what type or types of monkey, the sentence is rather garbled, that the writer of the 1931 article was familiar, perhaps capuchins, which are a small type of monkey familiar in the early years of the last century as companions to organ grinders, but the type of monkey used to make monkey fur garments were Colobus monkeys, particularly the Colobus Satanus, or Black Colobus, a large, Old World monkey with striking long fur.

            It was reported that Cora Viquesney had, “been unable to make up her mind whether she wants a paket or neck piece made from the skins,” but, whatever her choice, Mrs. Viquesney would have been a very fashion forward woman in 1931. Although monkey fur had been in use since the mid-1800s, the fashion designer Elsa Shiaperelli reinvigorated its use with her 1933 collection and continued to use monkey fur on her fashion designs throughout the 1930s.

            The Colubus monkey is an aboreal monkey. It spends most of its life in trees and rarely, if ever, comes to ground. The Black Colobus is found in undisturbed coastal forests of Gabon, Cameroon, Bioko Island and the Mainland of Equatorial Guinea. It’s highly specialized diet, made up mostly of seeds, makes it impossible to successfully keep this animal in captivity. The Black Colobus, once a common monkey, is now on the top ten most endangered animal lists in Africa because of destruction of its native habitat and the fact that “bushmeat” is considered a delicacy among the, comparatively, wealthy in Africa. Although Black Colebus is generally considered the least desirable form of monkey meat by connoisseurs, the Black Colebus has been hunted nearly into extinction to fill the illicit desires of this ravenous market.

E.M. Viquesney obtained his monkey fur pelts from “Kwame Asamoa of Pipipiti Bank, Begoro Akim Abuakwa, Gold Coast, South Africa and was thinking of going “into the monkey skin transportation business to fill the many requests for skins which he has already received.”

            There is no evidence that E.M. Viquesney ever did go into the monkey skin importation business in any big way although he later stated his intentions of gathering enough pelts to have a coat made for his wife from them. The pelts he received from Mr. Asamoa he placed in the “show window” of Easton & Newman for the entire town to admire, if so inclined.

~Laura Wilkerson
  Genealogy Department