"Such a museum is as necessary to archaeological lectures, as a laboratory is to lectures on physics or chemistry.”
- Adolf michaelis, 1884
Creating copies of three-dimensional objects is a concept that spans back to antiquity. The idea of having access to works of art through alternative mediums is nothing new. Plaster was used to replicate sculptures and reliefs in the round with nearly 1:1 accuracy. The Romans held Greek sculpture in such a high regard that they copied them freely and frequently using plaster, among other mediums. [1]
Plaster is and was cheap and readily available. The medium is easy to handle wet, flows quickly into a mold, and hardens in a short period of time allowing mass production. [2] A mold is used to take the negative impression of an object. Traditionally, molds would have been made of sections of an object, called “piece molds.” Plaster pieces are applied to the object, a small amount at a time, to create the molds. The interlocking mold pieces would be built up around the object. The pieces of the mold are separated by a thin layer of shellac lacquer to prevent sticking. The plaster pieces are then removed and reassembled when it is time to make a cast. To cast a copy of the object the mold is filled with plaster powder dissolved in water. A metal armature is inserted to strengthen the final cast. Once the plaster has hardened, taking usually forty-five minutes, a replica is made and left out to dry. Fine lines can be seen on the surface of casts where the piece molds met. Large molds may have taken up to a year to make, but they could be re-used many times over. Some molds may have been used for over a hundred years. [3] Today silicone or gelatin molds are often used. Below is a video illustrating the more modern approach to plaster cast making outlining general concepts.
As mentioned in the video above, plaster fell out of favor after the classical period but was re-popularized during the Renaissance. Artists first began to collect plaster casts of ancient works at the beginning of the 15th century to assist in training apprentices. The casts were part of the private collections of scholars, artists, and the upper class in Europe. Plaster cast collecting continued to grow in popularity. During the 18th century, cast museums that were once privately owned collections first began to appear throughout Europe and made their way into America. George Washington thought busts of great military men of antiquity would enhance his image and improve American culture. [4]
Plaster casts were a form of documentation of sculptures and monuments that allowed for distance learning. One would no longer need to travel all the way to Rome to study works by the masters, but rather their nearest cast collection. The low cost of plaster increased the casts’ availability for scholarly research within academic institutions. Museums relied on casts as economically conscious methods of assembling a collection. Mount Holyoke College was one of many academic institutions to own a plaster cast collection for study.
Asa Kinney, Dwight Hall: Sculpture Gallery, ca. 1920, glass plate negative, Archives and Special Collections at Mount Holyoke College
Asa Kinney, Dwight Hall: Sculpture Gallery, ca. 1920, glass plate negative, Archives and Special Collections at Mount Holyoke College
Asa Kinney, Dwight Hall: Sculpture Gallery, ca. 1920, glass plate negative, Archives and Special Collections at Mount Holyoke College
In the 19th century plaster cast collections were praised for their unifying and standardizing qualities that allowed for formal analysis, objective reconstruction, comparison, and classification of the originals from antiquity. [5] Museums of this period had an “encyclopedic agenda” and would collect casts to fill the gaps in their collections. The mid-20th century marked the end of an era of plaster cast collecting. Casts were no longer seen as educational replicas but rather as ghosts of a long-standing tradition and cumbersome cheap knock-offs. Many cast collections fell into disrepair and were often lost to damp storage. There was a great push by museums to ditch the copies for the real thing. [6] Since the 1970s there has been an ongoing evaluation and re-evaluation of cast collections. With the impacts of pollution and devastating man-made damage, as seen at the Mosul Museum, the value of having a replica of originals has proved incredibly priceless. 3D models pick up where plaster casts left off and improve upon their shortcomings. They continue this concept of accessible art that can be studied in the round from anywhere in the world.
With the rise of photography, museums feared the public would no longer want to see the originals. In fact, this had the opposite impact and sparked interest in museum institutions. This is also true with 3D models. They bring attention to collections and get people excited about what treasures a museum holds. Like both plaster casts and photographs, 3D models serve a complementary purpose to the original. None of these technologies claim to be or to replace the original but rather enhance the museum experience and the act of scholarly study and closer looking.
“Copies and restoration,” Classical Art Research Center and The Beazley Archive, last updated October 26, 2012, https://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/Sculpture/plastercasts/copies.htm
Rune Frederiksen, “Plaster Casts in Antiquity,” in Plaster Casts: Making, Collecting and Displaying from Classical Antiquity to the Present, ed. Rune Frederiksen and Eckart Marchand (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co., 2010), 14.
“Excavations,” Classical Art Research Center and The Beazley Archive, last updated October 26, 2012, https://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/Sculpture/plastercasts/excavations.htm.
“Traditional method,” Classical Art Research Center and The Beazley Archive, last updated October 26, 2012, https://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/Sculpture/creation/mould.htm.
"Cornell Plaster Cast Collection: Past and Present," Cornell University Library, last accessed April 17, 2017, https://antiquities.library.cornell.edu/casts/past-and-present.
Malcolm Baker, "The Reproductive Continuum: plaster casts, paper mosaics and photographs as complementary modes of reproduction in the nineteenth-century museum" in Plaster Casts: Making, Collecting and Displaying from Classical Antiquity to the Present, ed. Rune Frederiksen and Eckart Marchand (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co., 2010), 489.
Header Image: Asa Kinney, “Dwight Hall: Sculpture Gallery,” Digital Exhibits of the Archives and Special Collections, accessed April 17, 2017, https://ascdc.mtholyoke.edu/items/show/1633.