S e c r e t s

Chimpanzees are a favourite subject of Peter’s; hence the two colorways. Version one, produced in an edition of 200, is stained black. Version two, stained brown, is a House of Lords exclusive with an edition of 100. On this box figurine you will find three chimpanzees inscribed, each who has made a mark for very different reasons. In 1964 a journalist in Sweden took four paintings made by Peter the Chimp and exhibited them under the name of Pierre Brassau, an unknown French artist. He wanted to see if critics could tell the difference between avant-garde art and the work of a chimp. Most were fooled and praised the work! Wenka, unfortunately, has the distinction of being the oldest chimpanzee in a U.S. laboratory. Born in 1954, Wenka is at the Yerkes Primate Centre. Nim Chimpsky was the subject of a study at Columbia University to see if a chimpanzee could communicate with humans. His name was a pun on Noam Chomsky, a famous linguist, who believed only humans could acquire language. Nim Chimpsky learned to recognize 125 words of American Sign Language. The numbers 23 and 24 refer to humans having 23 pairs of chromosomes while chimps have 24. Another bit of trivia from Peter: chimp testicles can weigh 4 ounces, four times heavier than a gorilla or a human. The oddities he remembers!