Anna Coleman Ladd: The Woman Who Made Copper Faces for WW1

In 1918 in Paris, American sculptor Anna Coleman Ladd made copper masks for soldiers whose faces had been destroyed in the First World War: a plaster cast, a clay face, then a copper shell grown in an electric bath and painted by hand while the soldier wore it.

A copper mask could give a man a face that looked like his own. It could not rebuild a lost jaw or help him chew, swallow or speak: a face to show the world, not a repair.