Macabrepedia: A Marriage of True Crime and the Truly Bizarre

Death Masks

August 09, 2021 Matthew & Marissa Season 1 Episode 1
Macabrepedia: A Marriage of True Crime and the Truly Bizarre
Death Masks
Show Notes Transcript

In our first episode, Marissa and Matt dig into the history of death masks including why and how people have made copies of their loved ones' faces for centuries. 
We're going to be talking about some of the most important questions about death masks like: 

  • What are the most famous death masks? 
  • Are death masks still made? AND
  • Did the podcast hosts go to the craft store, buy crafty stuff, and make plaster casts of their own faces for this episode?

Join us as we add our first entry into this, our Macabrepedia.

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Matthew:

macabrepedia deals with dark subject matter that may not be suitable for all audiences listener discretion is advised.

Marissa:

June 22 1930 for the notorious gangster John Dillinger, a man who had the delimiter gang, who robbed 24 banks and four police stations. A man who escaped from prison twice, was gunned down in Chicago as he left a movie theater, where he just finished watching the movie Manhattan melodrama starring Clark Gable. The cop shot him four times and he fell to the ground and died in an alleyway. The next day, and more sure a student named Marjorie McDougal and her professor Dr. DE Ashworth went to the morgue and made a death mask of a man's face. As the plaster on the mold hardened a police sergeant burst into the room and took the mold from them heading to the police. Marjorie followed him distracting him long enough for Ashworth to make a second plaster mold, which they smuggled outside. This mold was then used to make a handful of masks, which have sold for upwards of $10,000 the death mask is so detailed that you can see the bullet exit wound under his eye and a scuff mark on his cheek more he fell on the pavement when he was gunned down. One of the most famous death masks This has also been a source of arguments and conspiracy. With some people questioning it Dylan Draven died that day outside of the Biograph theater in Chicago, Illinois. We invite you to stay and listen as we add another entry into this our macabrepedia.

Matthew:

Hello and welcome to macabrepedia, a marriage of true crime and the truly bizarre.

Marissa:

I am Matthew and I'm Marissa.

Matthew:

Today we will be exploring the McCobb practices around death masks. So a death mask funerary mask life masks are they're all very similar but different in intent, or materials. A funerary mask was more something that would be left with the body or used in rituals of remembrance, where a death mask or life mask was more of a plaster casting of the face that results in more of a buster statue like artifact that is not something that would be left on or with the body.

Marissa:

Right. So today I'm going to be talking about death masks. But I will be using this term to also include funerary masks and life masks. At one point or another. They've all been referred to as death masks and I'll be using this term interchangeably. Some are carved to resemble a deceased person's face. Some are made from a plaster cast made from a corpses face. And some are made from a plaster cast also, but from the person when they were alive. He Google death mask you'll see examples of all of these. So these masks were actually made for a variety of reasons, just sometimes as a way for artists to have a realistic version of the face before decay and bloat distorted the body. Because after a while, of course, you know, your course is going to look pretty grody. So they were trying to do this so they could get an accurate representation before they started doing their painting or their sculpture. Historians can sometimes tell if a piece of art was made from the subjects in life or from a death mask, as the death mask is sometimes distorted from its own weight as well. So for instance, there Shakespeare's death mask which was found in Junk Shop, and believed to be that of William Shakespeare. For one thing it has the year he died car down to the back of it. And it looks like him. Scientists have lined up different features on his face from the death mask and from portraits of him and they believe that this is his. This one is believed to have been made more than 24 hours after he died because the eyes are decomposing, and the conjunctiva or the mucous membranes that lie in the eye and eyelids are decomposing, and the decomp is gumming up the eyelashes on the death mask. So it's really it's creepy looking. Historians believe that some of his portraits were drawn from this mask.

Matthew:

So they're all so zu Shakespeare's all Shakespeare's portraits have him looking like he's got pinkeye or like something stuck in his eye.

Marissa:

Now not all of them but some of them really. That's what they think,

Matthew:

though. I mean, there's some there's some speculation as to whether or not he even existed as a person right? Yeah,

Marissa:

I don't agree with that. I think I think he was real well, okay. But yes, there is there there are hope all books written on it. Think Marlowe,

Matthew:

yeah, Lord Byron, or whatever was was was actually

Marissa:

a woman did it.

Matthew:

But they're there. They're just pretty sure that this app happens to be him. This could be this could just be the death masks that everybody built Shakespeare off of.

Marissa:

So moving on the science of making these we're not perfect. The death mask of Thomas Paine If you've ever taken a US History class in America, you know that he wrote the pamphlet common sense, which advocated independence from Great Britain for the 13 colonies. He wrote that in his death mask has a squished nose on it, because the plaster did not dry fully before it was removed. And the weight of the mask actually leans the nose to the side. So it looks like he has a broken nose but it's just the fact that the mask didn't dry fully.

Matthew:

He just had such a big ol Hawker that it couldn't support its own weight just leaned

Marissa:

overall. It's also interesting to see a side by side of Beethoven's masks because he had one taken when he was alive and then one after he died. So if you look at him like the one where he was alive, he looks kind of annoyed this a little slightly annoyed like Can we hurry up can I get this done? Like I just want to go compose whatever like I'm working on new lights and was it soon Moonlight Sonata right now?

Matthew:

You think that you just like burst into his room was like we're gonna plaster your face real quick

Marissa:

he's got bad hearing

Matthew:

stuff to do though. Yeah, he was definitely couldn't even hear what he couldn't even hear what was happening but just threw him backwards.

Marissa:

I just put a bunch of stuff in a space What the hell is happening to me? But the one where he's dead? It's very very different.

Matthew:

Because he doesn't have stuff to work on. He's like no, all my all my good. All my stuff is good. He's finally at peace. Yeah, I got it. I nailed this and nailed this. You guys are gonna be talking about this for a long time.

Marissa:

We are now his death mask is very different. For one thing he had had a disease for several months where he had been bedridden. So he clearly lost a lot of weight. But also His muscles are slack. And I mean, if you've ever seen a corpse people say they look like they're resting which is debatable but he does look far more rested than he doesn't know what he's alive for sure. Like his his muscles are just just slack you know, you've already

Matthew:

completed all the things you need to do. Music is great. I'm cool. Now let's just piece from here on out.

Marissa:

So we're gonna start talking about some famous ones, some famous death masks. We're going to start about 3000 years ago. Arguably the most famous death mask was found on the innermost coffin and King Tut's tomb. So if you know anything about Egypt, you've seen Tut's tomb you know about King Tut. He died somewhere around 1324 BC, and possibly due to the amount of inbreeding in ancient Egypt, Egyptologists think that had a clubfoot and cleft lip but also they think he died of a combination of malaria and necrotic leg. His parents were full siblings. So they think he just had like a lowered immune system. And he died when he was just 19 years old. So he he didn't, I guess, have the ability to fight off an infection like he had. This famous mask is said to have been made for King Tut. But there has been some debate that the mask was originally created for his stepmother slash mother in law. Queen Nefertiti all in the family I guess.

Matthew:

Yeah, cuz she it was just to party to be him. Right.

Marissa:

It's really pretty. Part of the reason for this though, is that the mask has pierced ears, which were most commonly seen on women and very young children and Ancient Egyptians society. Also interesting. The cartouche, which is the oval that's inside of the mask that has Tut's name on it to 10 common. It looks like it might have been filed down and retouched. So that also leads them to believe this was made for someone else originally.

Matthew:

Right. And this is more of like that funerary mask as opposed to like a death mask that this wasn't intended to be on display. This was supposed to be more of like a helmet type fixture that was left with the body in burial, right?

Marissa:

No, this was definitely supposed to be with Him for eternity. And we were never supposed to see it. Nobody was supposed to dig it up and display it in a museum in Cairo. But we did so. Tut's mask is more like a helmet. It's got the blue and gold Nimis on it, which is like that. It almost looks like hair, or you know kind of like comedy. It's it's the thing that Pharaohs would wear

Matthew:

right. It's also depicted on a lot of their the Egyptian gods like you would see on carvings and stuff like that. So I believe like, oh, Cyrus and a lot of those the, the the depictions of like the animal headed gods, they all almost all of them had like the Nimis kind of thing around the outside and so did like Moses and the prince of Egypt,

Marissa:

right? Yeah. I remember that movie. So he has that on his mask and then also the beard. And on the Nimis. Near his forehead, there are two goddesses. There's the vulture headed goddess Nick bet, and the Cobra goddess Wadjet. Now these represent an upper and lower Egypt, which he ruled. The mask itself weighs 22 and a half pounds, and it includes lapis lazuli, obsidian and quartz on the eyes, and then a slew of other stones in the color. The back of the mask has a protective spell written on it from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. And this spell was meant to be a roadmap for tut for the afterlife. The beard on Tut's mask weighs five pounds by itself. Do you remember a few years ago when the mask made the news? Because somebody was cleaning it and knocked the beard off?

Matthew:

Sure. No, no. What do you know, I only heard about it. What do you tell me about researching this?

Marissa:

I don't know. I just keep up with my ancient Egyptian stuff. I

Matthew:

guess I didn't go to school for that.

Marissa:

So what happened was in 2013, museum workers knocked it off when they were fixing a light. The worst part is though, that they they didn't really they didn't do it, right. They they put it back on, but they use an epoxy glue to put it back on, which actually damaged the mask. And some of this glue also dried on the face. And then someone scratched the face with a spatula trying to get it off. Like what the heck, but it's okay because since it has been restored, and they reattached it with beeswax, which is a much more appropriate restoration method. But I don't know if this beard was ever really on there very good, because when they found it in 1920s when they found the tomb of King Tut, it was not attached to the mask so they had to glue it back on at that point.

Matthew:

Well, yeah, it was supposed to be for his mom.

Marissa:

And well no female pharaohs were beards. No, she wasn't a pharaoh. Did Nefertiti there was a female.

Matthew:

She was Nefertiti was the queen when but by marriage. There was a female pharaoh and I know there was a female pharaoh wasn't Nefertiti.

Marissa:

Okay, so the female pharaoh was not never TDU was headships it, but she did have a beard. So I think she did it partly just to like,

Matthew:

clarify, to clarify, hold on to clarify him ships up didn't have a beard. Yeah, she was attributed a beard because there Rose had beards. Yes, she was given a beard for the sake of because of the fact that she was. She was for all intents and purposes. A Pharaoh. Yes.

Marissa:

I mean, it's not like scruffiness It's like she wasn't the beard. It's like that long. Hanging shoot. Yes,

Matthew:

they had that like that, that Pharaoh like beard that you see depicted which just shows that beards are cool.

Marissa:

After this incident, eight employees at the Egyptian Museum were sued, and the head of conservation was demoted. So I think he was demoted to the head of the like royal transportation museum instead of the full Egyptian Museum.

Matthew:

Transportation Museum. You like lights so much bugging you like lights about you traffic lights for a bit. The history of traffic lights, that's what you're in charge of now?

Marissa:

Yes, so he he didn't get fired, but he definitely got demoted. So the mask is really it's an impressive piece of history. It's also very important to modern Egypt, as well as last trip to the states netted the country's $10 million in revenue for people just paying to come and see it. Not to mention the tourism to Egypt. So also in Egypt, the mummification process itself preserves the physical features of the earthly body. So even without a mask, some of these don't have a mask. Even without that we can still get an idea of what a mummy looked like in life. And I've seen recreations of Queen Nefertiti and King Ramses the second and they look pretty cool. Our cat incidentally is named after Ramses. So not everyone of course could afford a gold mask in ancient Egypt. Earlier versions are made using a material made from linen or papyrus that was soaked in plaster, and then molded on a wooden form. And at other times, wooden masks were carved and connected using pegs. Like the wooden parts were connected with pegs. Sometimes they would also use the outermost layer of linen on the mummy, and they would work to stiffen it with some plaster. And then they would sometimes paint that to emphasize the most prominent features. Some of these have large lips, large nose, you know, it's not really a caricature, but they emphasize the base features on your face. This plaster work was also pretty common elsewhere in Egypt, and they would add this plaster onto statues sometimes because plaster is pretty smooth. So they would paint the plaster on top of the statue. And they would use Gypsum to make this plaster in a very similar way to how we do it in Now, today we mind a lot of Jepson with three quarters of the total minds today use for Plaster of Paris or other building materials. And sometimes priests would also wear masks for the funeral ritual. They would make these to resemble the head of a jackal, like the God of NuBus, who is the Egyptian God of the dead. And in hieroglyphics, on temples, you can also often see pictures of people with animal heads, and they believe some of this at least, would be people dressed with one of these masks on their head to resemble the God. Now we're gonna move over a bit. There are funerary masks from many cultures and antiquity, Peruvian Chinese just for some examples, one that I've seen myself in Greece, and this one is made from gold that was heated and hammered over a wooden form of a face. This one was found in the ruins of my sini. And it was called the mask of Agamemnon, because the archaeologists who found it thought that it was evidence that King Agamemnon from the Trojan War was real. Nobody today really thinks it was Agamemnon, since the dates don't really line up. And he will probably wasn't real. But the German archaeologist who found this one, whose name was Heinrich Schliemann, found it on top of a body in my Seanie. He actually found a lot of bodies that he excavated and many of them had masks, but this was the just the most prominent one is actually on a body. Yes, it was on top of the head of a body. The mask actually dates from around 1600 BC, which would be about 400 years before this supposed Trojan War happened. Agamemnon was the king of my seni and lore shore, no,

Matthew:

allegedly 100% Sure,

Marissa:

allegedly, and he was the leader of the Greek army during World War, he and his brother men Elias

Unknown:

also existed.

Marissa:

He stopped, was supposedly the king of Sparta and husband to Helen, who was named, or was called the face that launched 1000 ships. And she basically went off with Paris. Some say that she ran off with him. Some say that he kidnapped her. She ran off with Paris to Troy. And then of course, they went after with their army to siege the city and get her back. Agamemnon was very prideful, and he pissed Achilles off while they were sieging Troy during the Trojan War, and through that, he lost a lot of men.

Matthew:

Well, it's because Achilles couldn't be hurt because he didn't lose it, did they? Because they actually got in. Yes, sir. Agamemnon, first of all, Achilles couldn't be hurt, because of the fact what he hurt his heel, he could be hurt on this heel, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, you need to back up and do this whole thing because Achilles was on the side of Agamemnon.

Marissa:

He was yes. Did I not make that clear?

Matthew:

Well, you said he lost the war because of Achilles.

Marissa:

Yeah, I was wrong. I'm making that part out because I was thinking he could do it. But he didn't. He didn't know so I can

Matthew:

index killed them. They were she stopped talking. You don't want to know the fact? You don't want to do with a death mask anyways,

Marissa:

stop talking. You are the one who told me to explain Agamemnon

Matthew:

No, yes, my boy. Agamemnon was real. That's all I'm saying. You do you

Marissa:

good. I give him that was the king of my Seanie and leader of the Greek army during the Trojan War. He and his brother monolayers, who was allegedly the king of Sparta,

Matthew:

allegedly and then why are you throwing so much shade on these boys

Marissa:

and husband to Helen, who was named the face that launched 1000 ships,

Matthew:

which if you actually look up, you are ruining this whole take? If you look No, that wouldn't be if you didn't if you'd shut up. If you look up Helen of Troy, every depiction of her has her boobs hanging out. It wasn't really the face that launched 1000 Doesn't matter. It wasn't the face.

Marissa:

That's what they called it. He also apparently, they weren't talking Great tip salsa.

Matthew:

Great tips.

Marissa:

Let's go to war podcast. If we can, she also won a beauty contest against Aphrodite and Athena. Oh, okay. We're the golden apple.

Matthew:

Agamemnon. Agamemnon doesn't exist, but Aphrodite does.

Marissa:

This is all wrong.

Matthew:

And it was a wet t shirt contest. It was a wet t shirt contest. She had great tips Shut up, move on. Hey, if I'm just saying Helen had great tips. That's that was a real truth until the fact that you started making it making it dirty.

Marissa:

3600 years ago, she had great tips.

Matthew:

No, it's not a great tip to all of you. If you Look up if you look up pictures of, of Helen, all of the portraits, or all of the pictures of Helen all have her with a boob exposed. It just it just takes away from her faces. All I'm saying, my eyes are up here. You need to respect that. Says Helen. I'm sure she did. That's why she left. That's what she wants to try.

Marissa:

What happened to Helen anyway?

Matthew:

I don't know. She was fake. Good move on.

Marissa:

Oh, she went back with her husband. They got her and they took her back. Anyway, Achilles was on Agamemnon side. But Agamemnon had just this complex where you just want to be in control. He didn't want Achilles to, to get the glory, I guess. And so he made him mad. He went off, they lost a lot of people because of this, but they still want eventually. So Troy was real. They have found the ruins. My CD was real. I've been to the ruins. Agamemnon not real.

Matthew:

Okay, Kelly's also real not real.

Marissa:

No, they didn't know. His mother did not hold him by the heel and dip him in the river sticks so that he could be immortal. Except for the hill. She was holding him.

Matthew:

tagliatelle didn't happen. Tom's gonna tell.

Marissa:

Before we continue with our entry on death masks. Let's see what we can take out from our sponsors.

Matthew:

Hey, everyone, Matthew here, just wanted to do take a quick timeout and thank our some of our supporters and sponsors. Today we would like to thank this week's sponsor.

Marissa:

Whoa.

Matthew:

We have a sponsor. We do we have our first sponsor, and it is a sponsor that I mean, we are incredibly privileged to have here. It would be none other than morbid curiosity. Oh, what No. See, you have to be thankful and grateful for whatever sponsorships we can find. Well,

Marissa:

I'd be more grateful if we could pay the bills with sponsorship.

Matthew:

morbid curiosity. You know that feeling that makes you look at an accident that you're driving past that thing that drives you to seek out True Crime documentaries and tales about serial killers. That is morbid curiosity. Without that dark interest macabrepedia wouldn't exist. So we can't understate how appreciative we are to have it as this week's sponsor. Once again. That is morbid curiosity. You can feed yours here weekly on macabrepedia.

Marissa:

Hello, this is Marissa. We wanted to take a moment to give a shout out to our friends over at South Carolina's number one true crime podcast, Carolina crimes. Carolina crimes is a show hosted by Danielle Meyers, a state law enforcement operative and Matt hires a local radio personality. The two of them cover True Crime focused in or connected to the state of South Carolina. They cover crimes involving meth fueled murderers famous politicians having sex with inmates on the way to their executions and vaginas capable of exceptional muscular dexterity Man, am I reading that right? Yeah,

Matthew:

you you so are that's that's what the t shirt says.

Marissa:

I need to find that episode, episode three. You can find Carolina crimes on Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Matthew:

We now return you awkwardly to the podcast in progress. awkward

Marissa:

to the right. Alright, so the first type of masks made from life were in ancient Rome. These masks were big in Upper Roman society, though they were reserved for elite male citizens and the political classes. Roma masks were commonly used for the upper class by the second century BC, and they continue to be made to the fourth and possibly the sixth century AD. We know about them because of writings from Pliny the Elder and the Greek historian Polybius. We have however, found evidence including molds of women and children as well. So they were sometimes included as the ancestors. So these, which I guess I'll explain in a second. So these were pretty interesting. They were almost certainly credited in life during the man's 30s and possibly his 40s. So the prime of his life, these men would shave their beards, and then they would use some kind of a fat or olive oil to coat their face first. So they wouldn't use lose their eyebrows and eyelashes. And they would just cast around the nostrils just not cover their their nose much. They layer linen mixed with plaster on the face, allow it to dry and then pull off a plaster cast of the face. We don't actually have any examples left of the actual masks, because what happened was, they would make the the mask out of wax which they would pour into this mold. They would likely use beeswax, but it's not really a material that stands up to time. I did read about a beeswax bust that's been recovered from Naples but No examples of these masks have been found, I guess we can just hope that eventually they will. These masks were often kept in a wooden cupboard in the atrium of these upper class Roman homes for generations, along with labels that showed what public office this man held. And they were usually kept there and probably shown to guests who would visit. But they weren't taken out in public until the funeral where they were worn by actors at the public funeral.

Matthew:

So when people came to their house, they just be like, Yo, let me show you. This, this. This depiction of my granddad's face. Yeah, I'm

Marissa:

gonna show you my ancestors. So hey, look at all this, like,

Matthew:

how full is your cabinet?

Marissa:

In my opinion, like a status symbol, for sure, sure. I mean, it's only an upper class Robin home. So right, right.

Matthew:

And when when it comes to like the women and the children and stuff, I'm sure there's just some wealthy guy who you know, lost a child or a loved one. So early that they went ahead and got that done to

Marissa:

you more than they felt like the woman that earned her place, I guess, in some instances to be part of the selection similarly

Matthew:

to but not necessarily as sexist as the way you put it. I was thinking more of like, a very pretty sexist, or very loved person in your life. She earned her place.

Marissa:

I don't, but it wasn't as common as the male's. Yeah. So I mean, it had to be a special scenario for them to let a woman be one of the ancestors, she could have just been that she was very loved. But it just wasn't as common.

Matthew:

Sure. Well, love it. Love isn't common bib.

Marissa:

Not enough to make a mask and put it in your atrium.

Matthew:

I guess I'll make a mask of you. But the atrium promises, I have to get an atrium first. Yeah, we need to do that no priorities is get an atrium. If you're still around, make a mask of you.

Marissa:

Okay. So these were supposed to inspire young Roman men to achieve public office and work for the public good. And the actors wearing the mask at the funeral would dress in the uniform of the highest office the man had achieved in life. This collection of masks show just how ancient a family was. So the interest of the home had lots of artifacts, not just these masks, writers note that these were sometimes smoke stained, probably because they burned incense nearby as like a shrine ish area. The incense and you know, the ancestors masks and the artifacts and all that. Yeah, pretty cool.

Matthew:

I really wish that that was something that had survived times. I don't know, the Greeks still do something along those lines, but it'd be really insure beat, like try to do a DNA test on ancestry.com. If you could instead just open up your atrium cabinets and see all the oh yeah, this is so and so from back in the day. Great granddad.

Marissa:

Great. Greg, Greg Greg, right. Grandpop. So a group of college students from the University of Pennsylvania tried to recreate these in 2014. So they made masks using materials that the ancient Romans would have had access to, like strips of fabric, plaster and beeswax poured into the mold takes about 20 minutes for the plaster to harden enough to remove it. They would also coat the inside of the mold with an oiler of fat and then brush or pour small amounts and layers into the mask and build up the wax until a mask was created.

Matthew:

Similarly to like making your candle up a bit, you pull it out, let it cool, you dip it, you pull it out, you'll get a cool,

Marissa:

right I mean, we went to the Renaissance Festival, and they will make the casts of your hand. So you're you're dipping your hand into the wax and then pulling it out and putting it in ice water and then put it into wax again and ice water again, etc, etc until you get a cast. And that's what it is. You're just building up the layers

Matthew:

right now. That way they're all into your hands.

Marissa:

Because they won't do your face there.

Matthew:

I asked. They won't they won't do

Marissa:

your face. But you can do holding hands.

Matthew:

Yeah, but you can't do holding breath. No, you can't let your face be submerged

Marissa:

liability. They would sometimes keep these molds so that new masks could be made for children as they establish their own hope households with their own masks and atriums to display them. So you know your your son grows up, he gets his own house and you make another cast of your granddad's face so that he can have it in his atrium so he can start his collection etc.

Matthew:

Can't brighter than neighbors are just stories of grandpappy you need to have his death mask.

Marissa:

Exactly

Matthew:

how granddad was super cool, but Dad will let me have his face.

Marissa:

Sometimes they would also repair a mask if it started falling apart, which probably made them look pretty unlikely like after a while. If you know the nose fell off and you just patch it with a piece of wax. It's not going to probably look as good as it did to begin with

Matthew:

We probably have professional face wax makers, maybe.

Marissa:

But when somebody dies, you don't really probably remember exactly what their nose look like. So, sure true, because these would be used in funerals, the eyes were cut out so that the actor could see, in 78 BC, the funeral of the dictator sola, near the end of the Republic had about 6000 of these masks during the funeral ceremony. So then, we're gonna move forward a bit in time, we're gonna talk about true death masks, which really took off in popularity in the Victorian period. The Victorians actually really appreciated the masks all on their own. Before this, before the advent of photography, having a death mask or a life mask was the most accurate way to capture the likeness of a loved one. They were true death masks were a desert in his face was covered in Greece, and then bandages soaked in plaster, you really have to grease it up. So it'll come off cleanly, just like you do when you're baking a cake. Because if you don't, you're going to get layers of cake stuck to the bottom of the pan. Or maybe some of Patty's eyebrows stuck to the cast.

Matthew:

You know, your bake the corpse, though? No, no, it was a process that also took part right before cremation.

Marissa:

That's pretty unrelated. So the first layer captures the details, the first bit of fabric that goes down, it will sometimes even get the wrinkles, but you have to add more layers, so that doesn't fall apart because one layer is just too fragile. Then the mold can be pulled off and filled with wax or metal to create the mask itself. And in the 1700s, wax works had began to become a very popular paid attraction. Wax working was seen as a lesser art form, so let women work in it. Because of this, a woman named Marie gross Schultz began her career in wax, making death masks. Her mother worked for wax maker, named Karatu in Paris, who took her under his wing. Because of our connection to her to regrow, Schultz started making death masks for guillotine heads during the French Revolution. When writing about this experience, she said that she would put the head on her knees while making the masks. I mean, what else we got to do with it? It's a head without a neck. Yeah, roll around everywhere. If you put it on your lap, I guess you can at least keep it. Yeah, for stationary.

Matthew:

I mean, it's not like that. Well, hopefully they didn't have specifically designed like head holder head holders that they get. I mean that that kind of just seems like a little too like be a pike. Yeah, a little a little too too appropriate for the for the means like the like they were expecting there to be a whole lot of heads that were going to be here. I know French Revolution seems a little premeditated, though. So yeah, it makes sense to just hold it in your lap. Yeah.

Marissa:

She made the death masks of Louie the 16th Marie Antoinette, who she knew in life, and Robespierre, and she eventually moved to England and took her work waxworks collection on the road. She grew her business, which famously continues today, as Madame Tussaud's wax museums around the world. There are a lot of famous death masks and life masks that were made just this way. There are museums that have large collections of them, which you can see online. I've seen a couple of these myself. So you've got George Washington's life mask, which is on display at Mount Vernon, which was his home, and the poet John Keats, his death mask at the Keats Shelley Memorial home in Rome. They're pretty striking. It's really unlike seeing a portrait or even a bust of it. He has his own morbid appeal, just knowing that this was an exact cast of this person's face. Sure, knowing that this is on that person's face. At some point like it's, it's pretty cool. So during the Victorian era, a man by the name of Franz Josef gall thought that he could determine the character and intelligence of a person just by the physical features of their head, he would make death masks of criminals in the hopes of finding a link to their behavior and intelligence from the shape of their heads. He called this study for Knology. He looked at skulls and masks of the dead in his study, and he believed that the development of the brain influence the shape of the skull. Gall use this to prove that prove in quotation marks that a person's intelligence and behavior could be determined by their physical features, something that unfortunately, fueled belief in racism and eugenics. But we'll probably talk some more about that on another episode. No conversation about death masks would be complete without talking about a face that you may not even know that you've seen before photography was invented. death masks were often made of John Doe's and Jane DOE's so that police can use it to help Identify a body. After a few hours the body starts to decay, and the face becomes unrecognizable before long. So they made death masks and as one way to aid in their investigations, in addition to sometimes displaying the clothes and belongings of the found person, in hopes that somebody might recognize them. In the 1870s, or possibly 1880s, an unidentified body was pulled from the sin River in Paris of a young girl who was suspected to have drowned herself. The story goes that one of the attendants at the morgue was so taken by the young girls beauty that he ordered a plaster mold of her face. numerous copies of the mask for the unknown woman of the San mermaid, and some fashional Persians kept it in their home as home decor. When the Dollmaker Azman Laird all began working on a project with anesthesiologists Peter Safar. He remembered seeing this dead woman's face lighting can you della Sun hanging in the home of his relative and chose to use that one? There weren't created resources and, and let's this woman's face being called the most kissed face in the world. If you've ever taken a CPR class, chances are good that you've had your lips on the likeness of this unidentified girl who was pulled from the sin. So many years ago, this woman's death mask became the face of the CPR dummy, although I have CPR certified, and I don't think that was the face on the dummy, but maybe I'm just mistaken.

Matthew:

I did not get to actually I am CPR certified. And I did not actually get to do any of that on the day didn't have it done. Oh, we had the dummy. Yeah, the teacher did that everything. And we just watched. And she was like, that's how you do it. And I was like, Oh, I could totally save a life. No, I got that.

Marissa:

Well, we had we had the dummies, which was just like the upper torso and face. Yeah. And then there was like a plastic piece that you put into its mouth so that you could take it off and they could continue to reuse it with different pieces.

Matthew:

I think that was the reason why we didn't continue with that was like they didn't have a lot of those. So she just didn't she was like, just trust me the site. And then like two weeks later, they were like, Okay, we the amount of chest compressions has changed and you only do it X amount of time, whatever. That's yeah, so anyways, um, see, I will do my best to save your life regardless of what my certification may lead you to believe.

Marissa:

You're supposed to do it to the tune of stayin alive. So you're supposed to flow into the face, hold Record, hold the neck up, or tilt the chin up, blowing into the mouth, and then chest compressions, chest compressions to the staying alive. I was doing this research, I came across some death masks that have been sold in recent years for a lot of money. So the fashion nation, the fascination parotia nation, so the fascination is still real. You can buy copies of death masks like John Dillinger, or even originals but they can really set you back. So the death mask of a Victorian murder are named Benjamin krvaa. Ca, who was hanged with 40,000 spectators, including Charles Dickens, that one sold in 2017 for 20,000 pounds, which is about 26,000 American dollars. One of Stalin's bronze death masks sold for $17,000 in 2018, which was eight times what they estimated it to be worth this was one of 12 masks created after his death. But the record for a death mask was in 2013 when Napoleon's bronze death mask, which was made after he died at 21 sold for $220,000.

Matthew:

which I have right here for you. Yeah, okay, sure. No, I do

Marissa:

Happy anniversary. I mean, he was it's first of all, it's bronze. Second of all, it's Napoleon. And third of all, he's, he's got excellent bone structure.

Matthew:

He was a beautiful man.

Marissa:

He truly was. I was not expecting that when I looked this up. And you know what people still make them today. There are companies that will come to the funeral home and make a death mask of your loved one. Or you know, a life mask of you. Madam Tussaud's wax museum still makes face casts for actors when they need it. For instance, I was looking at a video the other day, and the actress who originally played a Vita and a Vita had to get a cast made her face for a scene where she would be at a funeral because Aveda eventually dies, and spoiler alert, and so Madame Tussauds did that for her. So they still do it to this day. They also do pretty much the same thing as they've done for centuries for actors when they need to have a model for prosthetics. So they put some kind of oil on your face and then fabric and plaster. Although now they do have some specialty materials they do less of the fabric I think this was used for Robin Williams and Mrs. Doubtfire, among many other examples. In film cinema, you get straws for your nose, but you don't suffocate. If not, that would be a really different dark kind of Death Mask.

Matthew:

There would be a started as life masks Canada as death masks.

Marissa:

We don't want that. So it's a little something to stick an atrium for your kids to enjoy them. But today, we have photography and videos. So we have plenty of other ways to remember our loved ones after they've died. But the death mask I mean, it's still pretty cool,

Matthew:

cool enough that we are going to go ahead and make a couple of death masks so you can see what I'm sorry, I guess they're not death masks. Hopefully, hopefully, they are life masks that make it all the way through to remaining as life masks of ourselves that will be posted on our Instagram, we will be posting a step by step process as to how to create a mask whether life masks Death Mask, whatever. On our Instagram, which is

Marissa:

macabrepediapod that is M A C A b rep dia pod.

Matthew:

Also on our Twitter and Facebook page, which is

Marissa:

at macabrepedia, no part on that one.

Matthew:

And you'll be able to follow along as we do this process and see what it actually takes to make one of these masks that we've been talking about tonight.

Marissa:

But don't get used to it because we're not going to be doing this for every episode. Yeah,

Matthew:

we can't actually do this for every single kind of episode because some of these episodes are going to be taking taking stories from points in time or from processes that we should not be posting online.

Marissa:

Right. We get lobotomize something I get I guess I mean spaghetti squash.

Matthew:

Tune in later as you find out that the lobotomy was actually practiced on cantaloupes before anything else but but that's that's a that's for another episode.

Marissa:

If you have any ideas for something you'd like us to cover, email us at macabrepedia pod@gmail.com Subscribe to us wherever you listen. If you're using Apple podcasts, please leave us a comment and a five star review. The comments are really good as noticed.

Matthew:

Thanks for listening. Please join us next week as we enter another entry into this hour. We'll see ya the whispers