The conservation and restoration of fur objects is the preservation and protection of objects made from or containing fur. These pieces can include personal items like fur clothing or objects of cultural heritage that are housed in museums and collections. When dealing with the latter, a conservator-restorer often handles their care, whereas, for the public, professional furriers can be found in many neighborhoods.^{[citation needed]}

Pelts are defined as the skin of an animal that still has the hair or fur intact. Animals used for traditional fur objects alternate between a winter and summer coat. The winter coats of animals are normally more desirable because they are thicker and fuller than the summer coats. The pelts are removed from the animal in a process of skinning and fleshing that removes all the tissue from the skin and pelt. The pelts are then cured and tanned to kill bacteria and create a stable material. Pelts are traditionally used to create clothing and home accessories like rugs, they can be mounted to create trophies or taxidermy specimens, or they can be sold and kept as is.

The only difference between hair and fur is semantics. Technically, both are made from keratin, which is also the protein that makes up skin, feathers, nails, hooves, claws, and horns.

"The way I think a lot of people understand fur versus hair is in the density of follicles," says Ross McPhee, Curator of the Department of Mammalogy at the American Museum of Natural History. "So for fur-bearing animals—which were converted into coats and so-forth—people always wanted it to be something that was very dense, so there's the idea therefore that fur is dense, and it certainly is in [the] kinds of fur-bearers that we use for this purpose. Whereas hair is not so dense. There's less of it."

This remains untrue however, because the human head has as the same "follicle density" as a mouse, but it just so happens to be genetically predisposed to stop at the head and not continue down the body. There are three types of hair: ground hair, guard hair, and whiskers. "Ground hair is used primarily as insulation and is soft, while guard hair is for protection from the elements and tends to be coarse." Both ground hair and guard hair are classified as fur. Because human hair acts as both, it can technically be called "fur". In reality, the keratin fibers that are described variously as hair, wool, or fur, depending on the animal type, are all referring to the same thing.

Taxidermy has been around since the times of the Ancient Egyptians. While more mummification than traditional taxidermy, the Egyptians still preserved animals in their form by removing the innards and drying the carcass with salts from the Nile to dehydrate and preserve. The earliest known pieces of modern taxidermy are from the beginning of the sixteenth century, when the development and perfection of taxidermic techniques were linked to Western Europe's fascination with the natural world. Through the ages, taxidermy has progressed. During the Victorian era, taxidermy became closer to what is seen in museums today. There was a transition from using straw, paper, and other materials to create the mountings for the hides to using internal structures with rods and the actual animal skulls. Taxidermy is still used in museums and collections today. Most notable is the work of Carl Akeley, who modernized the idea of including taxidermied specimens in recreations of their natural habitats.

Human beings have been wearing fur since the beginning of time. There is evidence that Ötzi, the Iceman, was wearing a pelt when he met his demise 5000 years ago. In classic antiquity, the ancient Egyptians, Phoenicians, Assyrians, Greeks, and Romans all used fur or pelts in clothing. In Western Europe, beginning in the 11th century, luxury furs such as ermine, mink, sable, and chinchilla were reserved for the royalty, nobility, high ranking clergy, and the bourgeoisie. Fur and the access to it became a way of sublimating the lower classes in the 16th and 17th centuries and were strictly controlled. The North American fur trade, during the 17th and 18th centuries, provided enough pelts of hare, rabbit, lamb, and wolf to appeal to the crowd that could not afford the luxury furs, which remained to be only accessible to the elite. The royal families of Europe frequently use ermine to create robes and line their crowns. However, before the 19th century, fur was used as accents, like linings, accessories, and for trimming gowns. Full fur jackets did not appear on the fashion scene until the mid-19th century as a display of wealth by the newly prosperous middle class. Seal skin was one of the first furs to be used for a coat. Fashion went through waves of monkeys, mice, and cat fur dressing during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The turn of the century focused on the exotic animals like lions, tigers, leopards, and polar bear fur. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, stopped the exotic animal fur market and the later part of the 20th century focused once again on more accessible fur like rabbit. Today, fur is a very controversial issue with groups like PETA protesting the entire fur industry and designers, like Armani, have decided to go "fur free."

There are several notable instances of pieces of modern art in museums and collections made from, in part, of fur. The most famous is a piece of Surrealist Art made by Méret Oppenheim called Object (Le Déjeuner en fourrure) or Luncheon in Fur, which is in the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (see Notable Example below). Inarguably, it is the most famous piece of art containing fur that is not a piece of furniture. Oppenheim once wrote of the spirit of her piece, "fur combined with a teacup evokes such a surprising mix of messages and associations. The fur may remind viewers of wild animals and nature, while the teacup could suggest manners and civilization. With its pelt, the teacup becomes soft, rounded, and highly tactile. It seems attractive to the touch, if not, on the other hand, to the taste: Imagine drinking from it, and the physical sensation of wet fur filling the mouth." Throughout the years, she created other pieces that included fur or hide in some manner. She became so synonymous with the medium, she was known as "the artist that works with fur", a label which she refused to embrace but was nonetheless known for.