How was it made?

Links to GSA ?

Any other pieces in the archives that link to this ? Like pics or sketches ?

How and where did classes take place ?

Who taught these classes ?

London in 1848. His father, James, was variously described as: “an ornamental

stonework maker”" ,illiterate

The company provided for art schools teachings specifically.

p.174 : "Charles Smith had died in 1918 leaving his sons in charge of the firm.

By 1925 the commercial cast side of the business was failing."

p.175 : "Although George died in 1948, Charles seems to have continued the

business of sculptors’ moulders until 1953, by which time he was eighty (Fig.

8. 9). In 1950 he took the death mask of George Bernard Shaw and casts of

the playwright’s hands "

They had like 2k moulds

It seems they were making their own death masks.

It is not really known if they had unusual means of production and their most well known piece is a copy of the Keats death mask

How to set up successful casting company ?

p.167 : "To set up as a cast maker it was necessary to accumulate a large collection

of models. This was most effectively done by succeeding to the ownership of

a firm within which one had been employed. ", Also avoid overlap of models with other companies, need for novel casts.

Sourcing models

Before 1918

p.170 : " With the exception of some casts from nature and the odd piece from

abroad, most of the items in the first section were taken from English medie-

val small-scale sculpture. The accompanying descriptions often credit the

Architectural Museum, Tufton Street, Westminster"

Then from the Louvre and in France

Making Process

Gelatine moulds +

p.174" the process requires an outer shell,

thereby demanding as much storage space as a piece-mould and the cast thus

produced can only be as good as its starting point, namely the typecast, which

had usually been sanded smooth causing some loss of original surface."

Appeared a millennia ago, was to pay respects to someone who has passed and for spiritual reasons. 

Also for artist research tools, before photography (the use of this one?)

Mask room, in room 32 of the national portrait gallery

Contemporary art - Self by mark Quinn, he makes casts out of his blood and freezes them

makes a new iteration every 5 years with 10L of blood.

History :

We can go back 9000 years looking at Jericho head.

Then funerary masks, idealized version of the deceased

Tutankhamon’s mask, in Ancient Egypt it was to help person’s soul to recognize their body and come back to it. 

Madame Tussaud’s. 1761, was a family of family executioners, doing moulages, she learned how to make death masks of guillotined heads. 

Profession dominated by women! 

Made life and death masks of the most infamous criminals of the day (like Burke and Hare).

Wild conclusions from masks, traits of criminals, like with pseudoscience. Measurement of lumps and bumps in skull, applied to race and class, attributed to Franz Gall. Casts of entire head : used for phrenology. 

Face of unknown woman that drowned in Seine in 19th century “ CPR Annie”. Morgue attender thought she was so beautiful, wanted a mould of her face. Tradition of moulding her face after that, many people had it in their cabinet of curiosities. Lead to Someone commissioned to make CPR doll, inspired by mould his grandparents had.

They appear on tombstones.

Nick Reynolds, last artist making death masks in UK. 

Face masks of death often of important men…

Gillian Wearing - interesting contemporary mask artist

https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/death-masks-famous-people/

About the process : Throughout history the method has stayed the same. The face of the corpse was lubricated and protected in gauze before clay or wax was applied to make an imprint on the deceased features.

Memento mori : remember you must die

It was hard to find information on Charles Smith, but I managed to find some on his son: 

The business operated from Kentish Town and Tufnell Park from about 1900-51. Between c.1900-12 the firm expanded into the sale of scholastic casts. Their stock was predominantly casts of architectural sculpture but also included some statues and statuettes. This side of the business lasted until the mid-1920s after which Charles James Junior and his brother, George Henry, worked for sculptors as plaster moulders until their deaths. Charles' clients included the sculptor, Charles Wheeler and he cast the death mask of George Bernard Shaw, 1950 (in the collection of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London).

Ok so, we now know that the family firm was involved in scholastic casts, which could indicate how it ended up in the GSA archive. It was also a business. Which makes me think rich people probably had orders as well. I guess the business stopped operating when photography became more accessible, and people could remember the deceased differently, and students found other ways to draw. 

Why was reddish-brown shellac used as a varnish?;

Why is the top half damaged and repaired with plaster?

What happened to the first version?

What were these death masks used for?

How did it end up in the GSA archive?

I have the feeling, this figure meant a lot to Smith, as he went through the process of repairing it, and it was the second version of a mask. The woman is unknown which makes us wonder what his connection was to her. Either he was interested in her after her death and didn’t know anything or much about her, or maybe he did know her but he couldn’t reveal her identity. I think the latter is more likely as he did 2 masks of her face. I also think the 1st version was probably in a worse state as the second one has already been repaired.  

On the archives page we can read : 

“Charles Smith was a plaster figure and sculptor's moulder in London active from at least 1886 until his death in 1918. After the death of Charles Smith, his sons, George Smith and Charles Smith Jr continued the business. The firm experienced financial difficulty in the 1920s, although the family continued to be involved in mould making and plaster casting until 1953.”

As this sculpture was made between 1886 and 1918, I think this was probably a test done by Smith as: she remains unnamed and at that period it was often of rich people, broken (yet repaired), or of someone he knew but wasn’t rich or famous. 

The Edinburgh Phrenological Society, founded in 1820 owned a large collection of death mask copies to use as research , maybe she was a research mask ?

in this case, public has a chance to decide what’s done with their image, which opposes surveillance and brings a more ‘optimist’ tone to facial recognition (nuance to topics that are overly-used in art and media right now, for good reason, but making art that gives agency to the public is a nice tone)

it’s not dehumanizing, just like the death masks were intended to pay homage to the person that died, or be used in a way to preserve the anonymity of the person (in respects to)

holding the data of the anonymous woman, is a way of remembering her, avoids “death” => vanishment

Celeste the link you put on contemporary works w greek statues, is very relevant to our project as, the exhibition helps the viewer recognize themselves in the artefact, which helps educate them in making them relate to the artefact more and be more intrigued on it.

I asked chat gpt how we could link death masks to facial data, in terms of anonymity :

From Death Mask to Data Mask

The act of anonymizing the face becomes a ritual of digital death — a memento mori reminding viewers that their data will outlive them, but not as they imagine.

🌫️ Bringing Anonymity Into the Work

Here are several layers — aesthetic, technological, and conceptual — that can express anonymity while resonating with the themes of death and remembrance:

A. Algorithmic Disfigurement (Counter-Surveillance Aesthetics)

After capturing each participant’s face:

• Use real-time filters that obscure, fragment, or dissolve the image.
  
  

• Possible styles:
  
  

  • 3D mesh distortion (turns face into digital mask geometry).
    
    

  • Noise-based anonymization (pixelation, glitching, smudging).
    
    

  • Data ghosting (image fades into static or vapor-like textures).
    
    

  • Thermal silhouettes (turns face into temperature patterns, abstract and impersonal).
    
    

🔗 Reference: Adam Harvey’s CV Dazzle — designs that “confuse” recognition algorithms through fashion and makeup.

Conceptually, this is about reclaiming the face from machinic visibility — resisting the gaze of surveillance.

B. Death through Light

Since you mentioned projection — consider using light as both the medium and the destroyer:

• A face is illuminated for a brief instant, then dissolves into pure light.
  
  

• Or: the more the viewer looks, the faster the image decays — a digital vanitas effect.
  
  

• Or: the projection becomes a negative — the participant’s face becomes a white void, an afterimage.
  
  

This reflects the ephemeral nature of the digital image and of life itself — “you are being captured as you vanish.”

C. The Anonymous Archive

• Every face could be stored as non-identifiable fragments — data noise, numbers, coordinates.
  
  

• The installation could display a growing archive of “lost identities” — a graveyard of data traces.
  
  

• The title could evoke a morgue, ossuary, or reliquary — but rendered in pixels.
  
  (Think Christian Boltanski’s installations of anonymous portraits.)
  
  

“We all die twice – once when we actually die and once when no one on earth recognizes our photograph.”

Each participant contributes a mask that immediately becomes unknowable, joining a collective digital memorial.

D. Participant Agency

To connect with the ritual aspect:

• Participants could press a button or say a word to “anonymize” themselves — a voluntary digital death.
  
  

• The moment they do, their image undergoes transformation — as if “casting” their death mask and letting it decay.
  
  

• The interface can suggest control over one’s visibility, tying to resistance against surveillance capitalism.
  
  

“We all die twice – once when we actually die and once when no one on earth recognizes our photograph.”

So if we relate this to the experience design : by letting the viewer photograph their face (record their facial data without categorizing them or analyzing the data in any harmful way), their photograph gets recorded, then, either by having a 2D image morphed into 3D, losing its accuracy, or if ever we choose to modify the data for the exhibition, their photograph becomes unrecognizable, like the death masks we are using as a reference for rememberance of life (and death - memento mori). So in a way, they live forever in this interactive experience, remaining anonymous