Smithsonian Magazine features a wonderful article this month on the ‘Tin Noses Shop’ of London. The London General Hospital's Masks for Facial Disfigurement Department, founded by sculptor Francis Derwent Wood, created astounding prosthetic faces for the wounded soldiers of World War I.

The prosthetic masks were actually fashioned of galvanized and lightweight copper and weighed as little as four ounces. The facial features were originally painted on with oils until artist Anna Coleman Ladd, who went on to head a similar facility in Paris, developed an enamel technique that was washable and had a highly realistic finish. She painted the mask while the man himself was wearing it, so as to match as closely as possible his own coloring. All skin hues and details were painstakingly done by hand and Details such as eyebrows, eyelashes and mustaches were made from real hair. Each mask was a quite literally a masterpiece and changed lives. As one soldier wrote to Ladd:

‘Thanks to you, I will have a home. The woman I love no longer finds me repulsive, as she had a right to do.’

It is truly a shame that today the only images of these men in their masks come from black-and-white photographs.

via Boing-Boing

Labels: art, surgery

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It wasn’t long ago that cadaver ‘plastinator’ Gunther von Hagens was grabbing headlines for his incredible cadaver sculptures and stirring up debate regarding the ethical use of human remains. However he was not the first man to use human remains as an artistic material. In the 18th century French anatomist Honoré Fragonard used relatively primitive preservation technique to create haunting and artistic anatomical displays. While Fragonard’s work rivals anything Gunther von Hagen has ever done, today it resides in the Fragonard Museum, which is hidden away on the third floor of a veterinary school on the outskirts of Paris.

Fragonard was prolific despite the tedious nature of his preservation techniques. Despite the fact that every blood vessel required wax injections and that every surface, muscle and nerve needed to be individually coated in wax, in nine years Fragonard created thousands of anatomical items to be used in education or, on occasion, displayed as pieces of art.

Only 21 of his models remain today. Nearly 250 years after their creation, few show many signs of age.



Read more about the life Honoré Fragonard and his museum here.

image: (Above) 'Dancing foetuses' circa 1766-1771. (Top) Wax-injected human head circa 1766-1771.

Labels: art, medical

M>uch of what we know of ancestral Maori tattoo and tradition comes from the studies and documentations made by Major-General Horatio Gordon Robley. While in New Zealand, Robley befriended the Maori there and used his artistic skills to illustrate and paint scenes of the Maori way of life. Currently the Dominion Museum in Wellington house seventy of his paintings and his sketches provided a basis for Cassells' publication Races of Mankind.

However, Robley is perhaps most well known for his eccentric collection.

The Maori mummified the tattooed heads of their tribesmen and Robley decided to acquire as many as possible. Over the years he built a collection of 35. In 1908 he offered them to the New Zealand Government for £1,000 but his offer was denied. Today, 30 of his heads are in the collection of the Natural History Museum in New York.

Read more about the life of Robley here.

image: Robley and his collection, from the book Medicine Man.

Labels: art, history, medical, oddity