



Pictured above is an important example of a WWI Facial Prosthetic that the Radio-Guy Museum has just acquired. It was hand formed of copper and then galvanized. The face parts were then painted while the patient was wearing it to best blend with their complexion. The eye is glass and was also custom made to match the wearers eye. It looks to be the work of Anna Coleman Ladd and Francis Derwent Wood in their Paris studio. The dedicated sculptors and artists in The 3rd London General Hospital’s “Masks for Facial Disfigurement Department” also created prosthetics of this type. From 1918 to 1919, 220 lifelike masks for gravely wounded soldiers were produced there. Solders nicknamed the studio “The Tin Noses Shop.” There’s a good article on the subject in the February 2007 issue of Smithsonian magazine called the “Faces Of War”. Pictured on the right is an example produced in 1916 by Harold Gillies who is widely considered the father of plastic surgery. Below is a 1918 film “Men With Broken Faces”. It shows Anna Coleman Ladd and Francis Derwent Wood working in their Paris studio with WWI soldiers. It shows the effects of war and can be a bit disturbing to watch.