CORNISH — More than a century ago, sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens and his assistants used a few dabs of plaster to seal shut roughly two dozen sculpture molds. The molds were then put into storage for safekeeping. Since then, the molds have passed from the Saint-Gaudens family to the non-profit Saint-Gaudens Memorial to the National Park Service, and also survived a catastrophic studio fire in 1944. Through the years, the identities of many of these sealed molds had been lost. Until now.
The National Park Service at Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site and the Department of Diagnostic Radiology at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, have developed a partnership to non-invasively peek at what these molds contain. With computed tomography (CT) scanning, normally used for creating an image of the inside of a patient’s body without surgical intervention, radiologists were able to scan the open interior spaces of these molds and then extrapolate the negative space into a positive digital image of what these molds would have been used to cast, all without opening or damaging the molds themselves. They have also taken the additional step of converting these CT scans into stereolithography files which have been used to 3-D print casts of these original Saint-Gaudens works.
A website showing examples of the scanned objects which allows the public to manipulate these scans in three dimensions can be found at this link: https://go.usa.gov/xn7KE. Additionally, the 3-D printed casts of these works will be on display in a gallery exhibit at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center until March 2018.
“This is an amazing partnership at the intersection of art, science, and history,” said Rick Kendall, superintendent of Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site. “These scans and the resulting 3D prints have literally turned the empty space in these molds into fine works of art that haven’t been seen in a century — making something from nothing.”
The molds were revealed to be from sculptural works that Saint-Gaudens and his assistants were working to complete near the end of the sculptor’s life. These scans showed the molds to be from the following known Saint-Gaudens works: Abraham Lincoln: The Head of State (completed in 1906, original cast in Chicago, Illinois), the Phillips Brooks Monument (completed in 1907, original cast in Boston, Massachusetts), the Sherman Monument, (completed in 1903, original cast in New York City, New York), and a bust of politician William C. Whitney (completed in 1907).
Perhaps the most interesting piece was a small mold, slightly larger than a football. The scan revealed a very small bust, less than a foot high, of a man with a close-cropped beard; a face that no Saint-Gaudens experts have been able to identify. This small bust is new to art history, not previously part of the Saint-Gaudens sculptural catalog, and may have been a study for a larger piece that was never completed after the artist died in 1907.
Molds are an important part of the process of creating bronze sculpture. Figurative sculptors typically start modeling a sculpture in clay. After undertaking an enlarging process, sculptors typically take a mold of their final version of the piece which captures all of the surface details of their work. The mold is then used to cast the final version in bronze. Today, sculptors use high-temperature rubber for sculpture molds; in Saint-Gaudens’ time, plaster was the medium of choice. The exterior of the plaster molds would be encased in a second, heavier jacket of plaster reinforced with iron, called an investment mold. The two sides of the investment mold would fit together like a clam shell to create a full 360-degree mold that would open in order to release the bronze cast. For storage or shipment, these clam shell molds were then often sealed with dabs of plaster to protect the fragile interior details from cracks and abrasions that would impact the final cast.
Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907) was the preeminent American sculptor of the Gilded Age and is perhaps best known for his Civil War era memorials and monuments. His major monuments and smaller works are located in public spaces and art museums around the country and the world. His home, studios, gardens, and personal collection of museum art pieces are now preserved as Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish, New Hampshire. For information on seasonal offerings, write: Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, 139 Saint-Gaudens Road, Cornish, NH 03745; phone: (603) 675-2175; visit the park website at www.nps.gov/saga and follow the park on Facebook at www.facebook.com/SaintGaudensNPS.
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