It is rarely that one takes on a task much greater than one would anticipate. Responding to the horrors inflicted by large scale conflicts in the first world war, American sculptor Anna Coleman Ladd reached out to the most vulnerable soldiers – the ones who faced life altering disfigurements wrought by flamethrowers, shrapnel and bullets. Of all the disfigurements, facial ones wreak the most havoc – the psychological and social impacts of which are most devastating. In 1917, Anna Coleman discovered portrait masks pioneered by British sculptor Francis Derwent Wood (who later, went on to teach sculpture at the Royal College of Art.) Francis Wood made prosthetic pieces from extremely thin galvanized copper for disfigured British soldiers inside of a place called the ‘Tin Noses Shop'(officially ‘Masks for Facial Disfigurement Department.’) Read More…