Oh, I get that. But as @L0ki says, it is a pop-culture thing and that has mostly been driven from the other side of the pond, I think.
@timd I think that caption still leaves enough room for the costume to be illustrative rather than guaranteed original from that era.
IMHO the Home Counties mostly have ‘Guifox’ day. One short word rather than two, accent on the first rather than the second syllable. If you are speaking on a bad telephone line, it might be ‘Guy Forks’ day.
Which is why I didn’t include it originally or make any claims about the image. Hulton Archive were generally quite good on their information and Wellcome Medical Museum certainly held all kinds of medical equipment.
Wellcome does have this record… Might have been deaccessioned, might have been destroyed during a certain war.
Image of a model wearing a Plague Doctor costume, previously on display at the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum in the early twentieth century. The costume is not held by Wellcome Collection.
It’s a stock character in Commedia dell’arte and also at canivale, so lots of fakes to confuse a less than careful museum
(The Wellcome Museum enters the room)
“Excuse me?”
Come on… The wellcome collection has a couple of books and engravings describing or satirizing the practice, and it has decades old photograph of a model wearing a garment that is not held by the collection.That’s pretty scant evidence.
meanwhile
Even if you believe that the collection’ provenance is currently impeccable, the fact that they do not have the artifact may point to a decision to get rid of all the doubtful stuff.
I’m pretty sure that’s this image, and not the one in the original post: they’re very similar, tbf.
But anyway, my original point was simply that the UK is not known for plague masks, a claim made by the BM employee who fell in the classic trap of claiming pan-European heritage for their own country.
The two questionable ones were apparently once part of the Wellcome Collection itself. The Collection has photos of one of them including one in situ in the Wellcome Library (mid-C20th). They were clearly both on open display and by the time of this photographwere in a state of disrepair (one being held together with tape!). I am as sure as I can be that both are actually Victorian recreations, produced mid-late 19th century as teaching aids, handled to death, then binned. The one on the left is made of either plaster or papier mache. The right hand one is made of the same worn fabric (wax cotton, oilskin?) as the robes, and there’s no way that set of robes has survived the 150+ years to the mid-20th century. The biggest point against is probably that the Wellcome called one of them a ‘model’ and didn’t keep either of them. If they were genuine, they likely would have saved at least one.
It’s a well-researched longish article which handles each of the surviving artifacts, photos, engravings and manuscripts in turn.
A cracking read!
Today s the birthday of the guy who repatriated the Mona Lisa to Italy.
Maybe if one of the colonies had called it a mask of significance back in 1800s there would be plenty
Scotland?
I found some British masks in the British Museum
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1977-0101-1
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_SLMisc-2010
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_SLMisc-1987
Any time the British Musuem is mentioned, I am honour-bound to mention this wonderful podcast
There’s rumours it’s going to be turned in to a TV show
Sounds great!
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
