Substitutes for a Master: use technology to improve your artistic skills. But after a few years I stopped selling my own Plaster Casts and put affiliate offers from Amazon on my website, where I earned a small commission. Every subscriber receives the free eBook „Drawing From Plaster Casts“ which also contains printable paper model nets for geometric objects to practise from. The privileged position of sculpture in the study of classical antiquity, strong from association with classical texts was strengthened further during the second half of the 19th century by the remarkable discoveries of originals in Greece. Indeed, the image of a youth holding aloft a tray of plaster figures became one of the 19th-century ‘Cries of London’. By the way: The Hue | Value | Chroma Munsell Color Chart printable eBook can also be purchased with the same discount code at 20% discount: Get practical information and free stuff for your classical atelier at home by subscribing to my newsletter. Plaster casts, generally in the form of classical figures, were used as elegant supports for interior lighting, a trade which reached its height in the early 19th century. Fig.5. Best value for money. National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, London, WC2H 0HESwitchboard: +44 (0) 20 7306 0055, Find out more about the Inspiring People project, National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, London, WC2H 0HE They would find plaster and other simple materials for forming figures locally. They were competing against an influx of Italian figure makers. Domenico Brucciani’s success as the leading Victorian plaster figure maker came as a result of a competition to select a moulder in 1853 or 1854 for what became the South Kensington Museum. The Giusti Plaster Cast Collection highlights mould making and casting processes that were used to produce objects for retail and to repair existing plaster casts. In the 1841 census, another maker, Dominic Cardosi, age given as 35, was listed in Gray’s Inn Lane heading a crowded lodging house of 14 men and boys, ages from 40 to 15, all listed as figure makers. Another figure maker, Raffaello Sani set up temporarily in Portsea, advertising a fine collection of Italian sculpture and alabaster carvings in the Hampshire Telegraph in 1869. We can design and produce to a high-quality standard, offering an extensive range of choice and diversity to ensure the provide the right product for the right style of room. The special boxes seen below were made by the Dresden antiquary P.D. Not so many classical art type casts, but you might find something suitable and the prices are very reasonable. In 1858 a court case against a master, Luigi Caproni, was dismissed concerning the wages of Mansueto Mei, a plaster figure maker who had left him after 20 months of a 30-month contract to make images. After all, it was meant to serve as a reference once or maybe twice and not as a decorative object for home. He is able to see the form better while looking at a monochrome reference. Italian figure makers in the 19th century, Bronze sculpture founders: a short history, Cast Collection - Victoria and Albert Museum, www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/sculpture/plastercasts/cast, The Cast Courts - Victoria and Albert Museum, British bronze sculpture founders and plaster figure makers, 1800-1980. Fig.6. Italian figure makers in the 19th century 4. Of Flaxman, it was said that he had ‘kept a large shop in the Strand, for the sale of plaster figures, which was not then so hackneyed a trade, as it has now become by the large importation of Italians’ (Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. Antonio and Louis Caproni would also promote their wares to a professional market, advertising as moulders and figure makers, offering figures for lights and gardens, figures painted and bronzed, masks taken from the living and the dead, adding ‘Casts taken from Gelatina’ (Blower's architect's, surveyor's, engineer's and builder's directory, 1860). Sculptors’ moulders became a specialist branch of plaster figure working, producing piece and waste moulds, gelatine moulds and plaster and wax casts, so necessary in the production of bronze sculpture. Suppliers included Peter Chenu, James De Ville, the Giannelli family, Francis Hardenberg, Humphrey Hopper, the Papera family and Robert Shout. In the case of Papera, we know that he built up a remarkable clientele of leading figures in society within a few years of arrival, including the Duke of Richmond, the Earl of Warwick, Sir George Beaumont and Sarah Siddons. Each cast is hand-finished in the studio, suggesting how the hand of the artist might affect a finished piece. One of the largest such groups arrived in the Port of London from Boulogne on 9 May 1853, with 14 men and boys led by Luigi and Pietro Sarti. Texts address plaster casts and related themes from antiquity to the present day, and from Egypt to America, Mexico and New Zealand. In December 1850, Antonio and Luigi Caproni announced in the Newcastle Courant that Luigi Caproni had taken a show room in the Collingwood Inn in Newcastle to exhibit his splendid collection of statuettes, suitable for the artist or for ornament (the advertisement is headed, ‘Fine Arts! When I started my online activities in the field of classical art, I offered my own Plaster Casts for Cast Drawing at a reasonable price at www.cast-drawing.com, as the market only offered expensive goods from real sculptors. In the period under review, it is possible to identify a variety of such connections: James De Ville worked for Joseph Nollekens, Matthew Mazzoni for Richard Westmacott, James Cockaine and Peter Sarti for Francis Chantrey, Fernando Meacci for Edward Onslow Ford and Alfred Gilbert, the Smiths for Eric Gill and Charles Wheeler and ‘Mac’ Mancini for Barbara Hepworth. These itinerants sought not to settle in England but to return home with enough money to become owners of a house and a little land in the immediate neighbourhood of the villages where they were born. From there, they would cross France, perhaps to Fontainebleau, and so on to Paris, Amiens and Calais and finally to England in search of ‘a golden harvest’. A nice selection of plaster casts of the human form, as well as plaster geometric shapes. In photographs such as 'The Faun' (2007), the London based Liane Lang emphasizes the sensuous potential of plaster casts after classical nudes, as well as their lifelessness by staging them together with life-like reproductions of human limbs made of latex, wax, silicon, or rubber, that disturb the viewer as they appear … Click the link and you will be directed to the shop page were all my Plaster Casts are displayed: You can enter the code on the cart page as well as on the checkout page. Advertising more than 300 plaster figures of classical and modern subjects. Joseph Caproni employed five men in 1871 and Onarato Regali six or seven. John Baptist Giannelli was in London by 1777, Anthony Sartini by 1785, Bartholomew Papera by about 1789 and Ambrose Pelligrini by 1790. By 1842, the Museum was offering a service to despatch casts to any part of the world (Synopsis of the contents of the British Museum, 1842, p.258, accessible through Google Book Search). The sherd and squeeze collections may be of more interest to academic researchers but these databases make our collections accessible to all. When visiting Tuscany in the 1890s, Hubert Crackanthorpe wrote home of a hermit at a tiny mountain chapel, ‘a splendid old boy with a flowing white beard’, who turned out to have lived for twenty years in the Euston Road, working as as a sculptors’ moulder for Mullins, Thomas (of Capri), Onslow Ford and others (David Crackanthorpe, Hubert Crackanthorpe and English Realism in the 1890s, 1977, pp.98-9). Developments in the plaster figure trade 2. Waterproof Cast/ Plaster Protector #1 . Nothing special and in any case not expensive. Other moulders who worked for the South Kensington Museum in the late 19th century included Enrico Cantoni, in England by 1881, and on a more occasional basis, Fernando Meacci and Lorenzo Giuntini. On arriving at Chambery, the artist, or the captain of this company would set to work, despatching his boys through the city and the little towns and villages in the neighbourhood, to sell the figures which he had rapidly made. A recent resurgence of interest in the use of these aids to teach art fundamentals has inspired Statue.com to create a collection of Artist Cast … These most often are anatomical plaster casts. This trade began in about 1820 and was extremely popular for several decades. Where an individual maker or a particular cast collection is referred to in the above text, the information is sourced in the online directory, British bronze sculpture founders and plaster figure makers, 1800-1980. William Blake, plaster cast of head by James De Ville, published 1823 (National Portrait Gallery). They would cross the Apennines and the Alps, marching in a little corps of twelve or fifteen. Switchboard: +44 (0) 20 7306 0055, We are currently closed until spring 2023, while essential building works take place, 1. The Architectural Museum in London, founded in 1851, was one such collection. Articles explore the functions, status and reception of plaster casts … They are of interest to classical archaeologists, art historians, the history of collecting, curators, conservators, collectors and artists. One or two men, experienced in casting figures in moulds, would collect a number of poor boys, of whom they would become the captains. Such figures might be bronzed to give them a more solid appearance and to suit the heavy feel of Regency interiors. Plaster casts, generally in the form of classical figures, were used as elegant supports for interior lighting, a trade which reached its height in the early 19th century. Plaster is white so there is no color distracting the student. Plaster Casts (900 plaster casts of classical sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum) The Plaster Casts database is a legacy database created as part of an EU R&D project in telecommunications in 1994. Texts address plaster casts and related themes from antiquity to the present day, and from Egypt to America, Mexico and New Zealand. Such private collections, however, remained modest and uncommon until the 18th century. Many of these men and boys will have been on lengthy fixed-term contracts, of as much as three years, under which they were paid a bonus on completion, leading to occasional abuse of the system whereby they were harassed towards the end of their contract to the point that some left in desperation, losing their wages and their bonus (see Lucio Sponza, Italian Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Realities and Images, 1988, pp.76, 78). This page is intended as a source of information for art students who want to learn classical painting. The sculptors, Joseph Nollekens and Sir Francis Chantrey, and the artist, Benjamin Robert Haydon, were also active collectors, while the architect, Sir John Soane, chose to ornament his house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields with an array of casts, many chosen towards the end of his life with his proposed museum in mind. The cast was purchased by The Metropolitan … They met with considerable success and were followed by Matthew Mazzoni by c.1803, Peter Sarti by 1816, Lewis Brucciani in c.1820 and Domenico Cardosi and Giovanni Franchi by c.1830, as well as others. Texts address plaster casts and related themes from antiquity to the present day, and from Egypt to America, Mexico and New Zealand. Admiral Lord Nelson, plaster cast by Dominic Cardosi, 1830s or later, from bust by Franz Thaller and Matthias Ranson, 1801) (National Portrait Gallery). He would arrive ‘carrying a large white enamelled bowl (for mixing Plaster of Paris), a roll of scrim (for reinforcing the plaster) and a collection of odd lengths of iron rods (for bracing the moulds)… He would have come to Chelsea, with all this paraphernalia, from Camden Town…. He worked extensively for Edward Onslow Ford and Alfred Gilbert in the late 1880s and early 1890s, until his death in London in 1893, age 56. This development was a matter of comment at the time. In the second half of the 19th century, London institutions and museums were actively building collections of  casts of architectural details and of works of art, as well as of fixed monumental work, both from Britain and abroad. From about the mid-18th century, when plaster casts of antique sculpture became more widely available, antique gems also began to be copied in plaster and other materials. Discovery, reception and diffusion of classical art - Sculpture - The Classical Art Research Centre and The Beazley Archive - The University of Oxford By the late 19th century, the sculptors’ moulder had become an established specialist role. In 1843 Antonio Caproni of 97 Gray’s Inn Lane was accused of retailing an indecent cast of a naked female figure in the street. These modules will cover proportion, shape, angles, values and mass starting with Bargue drawing studies (2D - 2D) and progressing onto chiaroscuro techniques from simple classical plaster casts (3D - 2D). John Thomas Smith’s etching, Very Fine. Very Cheap (fig.3), shows how well-established this street trade had become in the public imagination by the time of its publication in 1815. Records from The Glasgow School of Art document purchases and repairs from J. Giusti & Co. from as early as 1890, and casts related to those in the collection … Fig.4. On our sites, advertisements and links to the Amazon.com site are integrated through Amazon, where we can earn money through reimbursement of advertising costs. 97, 1827, p. 273). Orders from Plymouth, Liverpool, Bristol and elsewhere followed. Fine Arts!!’). Very Cheap, etching by John Thomas Smith, published 1815, from his Etchings of Remarkable Beggars, Itinerant Traders and other Persons (National Portrait Gallery). Our Collection. In his 1968 autobiography, Wheeler gives a graphic description of ‘Charlie Smith’, whom he described as ‘a big man, slow of gait and with a high-pitched voice’. Fig.7. The younger generation of English-born makers, with a few exceptions such as Robert Shout, did not play such a significant part in the popular market and diversified into related trades as did James Cockaine, James De Ville, Humphrey Hopper and William Pink. In the event, the Victoria and Albert Museum did take on Brucciani’s cast making business from 1921, renaming it the Department for the Sale of Casts while retaining the same manager, Paul Ryan. I bought this for £28 and used it a couple of this is a model of a road over rail bridge by s d mouldings now rare. The sculptor, Joseph Bonomi the Younger, cast reliefs for Robert Hay in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt, 1824-34, while Lorenzo Giuntini worked in Central America for Alfred Maudsley in 1883 and 1885 and in Persia for Herbert Weld in 1892. As a result, many 19th-century plaster figures are marked with the maker’s name. In the second half of the 19th century the market for bronze statues for civic spaces and for statuettes for domestic interiors developed rapidly. While at first these two activities, plaster figure making and bronze sculpture founding, were largely separate, as the century progressed some plaster figure makers came to specialise as sculptors’ moulders and also began to have an impact on the trade in electrotype reproductions. The Gallery holds the most extensive collection of portraits in the world. The database depends on Kurtz's Reception of Classical Art in Britain, an Oxford story of plaster casts … In a remarkable account, the story was told of Italian plaster figure makers, from the mountains north of Lucca, journeying across Europe, to France, Germany and even to Russia (‘Wandering Italians’, Penny Magazine, 2 February 1833, no.54, p.42, accessible on Google Book Search). The leading English figure makers of the late 18th century were in retreat: John Cheere died in 1787, James Hoskins in 1791, William Collins in 1793, Charles Harris in 1795, Richard Parker in 1799 and John Flaxman senior in 1803. The sight of itinerant figure sellers inspired several Victorian paintings, including James Collinson's Italian Image Boys at a roadside Ale House, 1849, and William McTaggart's Following the Fine Arts, 1874, as well as popular printed images (see Journal of the History of Collections, vol.3, no.2, 1991, pp.283-4). The more established makers would advertise in the press and elsewhere and might focus on the trade in casts and reproductions for museums, professionals and schools of art. The business of producing plaster figures became associated with immigrant Italian workers, mainly from the province of Lucca, who would come to London in groups and who would sell plaster figures on the streets. However, the products listed on Amazon were not always and in every country available. Casts from both institutions eventually came to the Victoria and Albert Museum, from the former in 1916 and from the latter, in smaller numbers, following the disastrous Crystal Palace fire in 1936. Another specialist side of the plaster trade was the supply of phrenological heads for phrenology, the study of human conduct through the measurement of the skull. There was also a period when plaster phrenological heads were a focus for the study of the human head. The collection of the Museum of Classical Archaeology ranges from the largest of sculptures to the smallest of artefacts. Although the market today for new bronze sculpture has somewhat declined, and with it the need for such a network of independent sculptors’ moulders, the continuing importance of casting and working in plaster and similar materials can be seen from the work of artists as varied as Rachel Whiteread and Thomas Houseago. A cast might even be painted, reproducing an aspect of classical sculpture that is … Other moulders of Italian origin returned to the land of their birth. Once the market had been exhausted, the master would send his moulds and tools to Geneva, and follow on foot with his troop, each of whom would carry a few figures to sell at towns and villages on the road. Four figure makers, Brucciani, a Mr Caproni, a Mr Sacchi and a Mr Ambrosi were each asked to make a mould of a certain relief. James De Ville in London and Luke O’Neil in Edinburgh were the leading suppliers of such plaster heads. Fig.3. Now that the Corona thing gives us a lot of time at home, I have brought my Plaster Casts back to life and added them to my shop. Plaster figures have been used in one form or another for centuries. Plaster Cast Interiors – There’s a wide range of weird and wonderful plaster casts available here. Clifford saw the great boom in plaster shops as dwindling and collapsing in the 1830s but it is now clear that while the market for figures for lighting and furniture declined, there was a growing interest in collecting plaster casts for museums and academies, as well as a taste for more modest figures in ordinary homes. Collections were assembled in boxes which could be transported. Clifford established the importance of such figure sellers in 18th-century Britain, especially in London, and their role in supplying figures and plasterwork for ornamenting and lighting interiors, and for use as models for manufacturers such as Wedgwood. 1. This account takes up where Timothy Clifford’s essay, The Plaster Shops of the Rococo and Neo-Classical Era in Britain leaves off (Clifford 1992). To ornament interiors from the 16th century to the present day statues for civic spaces and for statuettes for interiors. 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