Pictured above is an important example of a WWI Facial Prosthetic that the Radio-Guy Museum has just acquired. It was hand formed of copper and then galvanized. The face parts were then painted while the patient was wearing it to best blend with their complexion. The eye is glass and was also custom made to match the wearers eye. It looks to be the work of Anna Coleman Ladd and Francis Derwent Wood in their Paris studio. The dedicated sculptors and artists in The 3rd London General Hospital’s “Masks for Facial Disfigurement Department” also created prosthetics of this type. From 1918 to 1919, 220 lifelike masks for gravely wounded soldiers were produced there. Solders nicknamed the studio “The Tin Noses Shop.” There’s a good article on the subject in the February 2007 issue of Smithsonian magazine called the “Faces Of War”. Pictured on the right is an example produced in 1916 by Harold Gillies who is widely considered the father of plastic surgery. Below is a 1918 film “Men With Broken Faces”. It shows Anna Coleman Ladd and Francis Derwent Wood working in their Paris studio with WWI soldiers. It shows the effects of war and can be a bit disturbing to watch.
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July 18, 2010 at 2:17 pm
zad carlos
Hi this is amazing site! really perfect and it will be a new inspirations for me and I like this post.
July 19, 2010 at 1:09 am
earlyelectrics
Thanks for the kind words. It’s encouraging to know someone is watching.
Steve Erenberg Prop.
January 11, 2011 at 11:15 am
Nate
Were these made to match previous pictures of these men, or just fabricated?
January 11, 2011 at 11:32 am
earlyelectrics
Pictured are real artifacts from WWI and were actually used.
Steve Erenberg Prop.
July 3, 2011 at 4:54 am
harry
nice, imformative writing, i enjoyed reading it
November 3, 2011 at 5:29 am
Edmund
I find this to be quite fascinating! These artists did some superb and inspired work to help these unfortunate men feel more comfortable in public. The Prosthetic piece that the character Richard Harrow wears for his role in “Boardwalk Empire” seems based very much on the look of their work.
Thank you for sharing this.
August 26, 2012 at 4:19 am
Mike
This video is excellent! I am a maxillofacial prosthodontist and this is the precursor to what I do in these contemporary times. Great find!
November 13, 2012 at 10:02 am
Guest Post: Some Assembly Required by Inez Kelley
[...] Francis Derwent Wood was a sculptor who enlisted at age 44 and was assigned as an orderly in a military hospital. Until this point, rubber prosthetics were used with minimal benefit. They smelled, they chafed, they fit poorly, they were hot, etc. For a missing nose, an unpainted tin triangle was often fashioned and tied around the head like a bandana. Wood found this distasteful and disrespectful of the human being. Along with American-born sculptor Anna Coleman Ladd, Wood founded the Masks for Facial Disfigurement Department. The service became commonly called the ‘tin noses shop’. [...]