Wax Worker

Writer and professor Jennifer Tucker joins Helen and Matt to discuss Wax Workers, Wax sculptures have been around for centuries and before the printed image wax museums were very popular around the western world.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is job Sleete. I'm Helen Hung and I'm Matt
beat and today we're talking about wax workers. People might
know that they had a kind of a side hustle
in wax erotica. Often they were kind of miniatures, erotic scenes,
things like that. Today, if we want to see our

(00:22):
favorite celebrity, we just opened up a computer. But imagine
a time long before mass media, without getting that rare
opportunity to see them in person, how would you have
any idea what the queen or king looked like. Well,
there was another way. It did, require going to a museum.

(00:43):
That's why wax museums were really more than just a
tourist attraction. Back in the day. Wax museums were places
to see and be seen, and they were part of
the news of the time. And this episode lets wax
nostalgic for the wax sculptor, the person who practically brought

(01:04):
these celebrities to life by recreating life size, hyper realistic
versions of them. Have you ever been to a wax museum.
I have. I've been to Madame Tussau's and it's a
little creepy. I think it's kind of creepy because some
of this figures do look so realistic. I mean, they

(01:25):
do a really good job. One of the most memorable
experiences of my life actually it was the Presidential wax Museum. Wait,
how old were you and like, what was your impression
of of seeing that? I would have been about ten
years old and I was a big president geek back then.
Totally not now like presidential history. I'm totally not known

(01:45):
on the internet. Is that guy now? But back then
in awe? But yeah, you're in history geek heaven, Yes,
I was, Well, what are we talking about today? Are
we talking about the person who makes those figures? Is?
Because I am kind of fascinated by those people. Yeah,
and of course they still are around today. We'll get

(02:06):
into that more later. But you know, the this actually
used to be a much more common thing to be
a wax sculptor. I'm assuming that wax sculptures are only
like were they Did they start out only for wax museums? No,
they did not. They go way back and it started
out with funerals. Actually, yeah, so we we did talk

(02:30):
to an expert on wax. She's actually writing a book
about wax. Um. My name is Jennifer Tucker, and I
teach modern history at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. The
first known use of wax for modeling was the sculpting
of bronze and jewelry using something called the lost wax
casting process, and so that method was used for making

(02:53):
a wide variety of figures and portraits in ancient Greece,
and then it remained popular throughout the nineteenth century and
is kind of making a comeback. Wax was used over
the centuries for a number of different purposes. It was
used for deaf masks, for making wax models, sometimes for funerals,

(03:16):
and it was also used in medical education. The use
of wax sculpture of the deceased was a common part
of funeral ceremonies of very important people over a long
stretch of European history. Sometimes they were shown lying on
the coffin at the funeral, and sometimes they were dressed
in the clothes of the deceased. Oh that's a good point,

(03:38):
like if the king is already bloated and and and
they didn't know, they didn't know how to make the
king look good, So they were like, you know what,
let's let's let's just make a wax figure. Of the
king and because you know, you don't know when you're
going to croak, sometimes they would commission these long before
they died, just you know, to be ready. Oh that's
extra that's extra creepy. If like, you know what this

(04:01):
is gonna be my funeral body, stand in and and
then and you commission it and it's made, and now
you're like face to face with yourself like in wax. Oh,
that's real creepy. I'd be staring at myself like I'd
be like, I'd be like, wait a minute, that mole
is not that big. Come on. The It wasn't just funerals.

(04:25):
It wasn't just as a medical tool, but it was
also art. You would have people that got ahold of
bees wax and they would just make small sculptures in
their free time, if they ever did have free time.
That tradition carried on kind of underground, Like we don't
see these wax works today. We just assume that they
existed based on some writings and oh, yeah, I guess,

(04:49):
I guess they don't really stand the test of time
if they're melty wax. Yeah. So now let's go to
the age of display, the period where where the wax
effigies were being made for funerals began to wane in
the middle of the eighteenth century, and after that the

(05:09):
waxworks become really part of commercial entertainment, kind of an
urban attraction. Sometimes waxworks were set up in fashionable shopping
or theater districts. Their competitors would be things like bluniscence
and magic lantern shows and theater. So it kind of
went from being this art that had connections to the

(05:31):
church to becoming something that was really for the masses.
Historians have called the nineteenth century an age of display, so,
you know, a time when exhibitions and museums were vying
for the public's attention. So places like Paris and London,
and in the United States, places like Philadelphia and New
York became hubs for waxworks exhibitions. Yeah, you know, when

(05:53):
I lived in New York City and I had started
my stand up comedy career, I was annoying to see
people go into the wax museum and not come to
the comedy club. So I get her, I get her
saying that it was competition, Like would be like, come
come see comedy, come to the comedy club. They're like, Nah,
we're gonna go see Brad Pitt in wax over here,

(06:14):
or to go on someone who's not alive. So, like,
were these people who were making these wax sculptures there
their artists, right, they're kind of like painters, like, hey,
come to the museum and see a painting, or let's
go to the wax museum and see a wax sculpture. Yeah,
and this is before the photograph, before the motion picture,

(06:37):
So this was as close as you were going to
get to actually seeing what someone actually look like. A
big part of their appeal is this appearance of being
true or real. It's sort of uncanny. You know. You
could walk around them and you could look at them,
and you could stare at them up close in a
way that you couldn't really stare at real people up close. Um,

(07:00):
so they really provided this sense of proximity. You know.
It was this kind of strange medium. It was real
and unreal. These were also popular in the era before
illustrated newspapers. So many times that the kind of important
figures who were exhibited. People might know their name, but
they wouldn't necessarily know what they looked like. And even
if they saw them in a crowd. It would have

(07:20):
been from far away. That's crazy to me. So like, yeah,
there was no Brad Pitt of the time or Angelina
Jolie of the time, because like, who would know who
was the hottest person? How would you even know if
there were hot celebrities if you lower whatever, no one
really ever got to see anybody. Well, the idea of

(07:42):
hot celebrities didn't even exist back then. They didn't. They
couldn't even fathom that. I mean, think about world leaders.
Up until the photograph. For the most part, you got
a lot of not so good looking world leaders, you know, right,
like like George Washington apparently had wooden teeth. And then

(08:02):
here's another thought that really wrapped your head around this
if even even before the photograph, which came around the
eighteen thirties forties, you only had paintings. But really only
the super wealthy and powerful people had paintings of them.
I mean, sure, these wax figures were mostly famous people,
but that three dimensional, life size aspect of it, and

(08:23):
like the attention to detail to make them look as
realistic as possible, that was it. That was like, that's
why they were such big attraction. It's mind blowing to
think that you could have like the monarchy, like the
king or the queen who was ruling everything. Nobody knows
what they look like, nobody, nobody's seen them. And then
suddenly someone's like, hey, come see a wax sculpture. I'd

(08:46):
be like, hell, yeah, I want to see what this
king and queen looks like. Yeah, this was maybe that
if there's a wax figure nearby, this is their chance
there one chance to see what they truly look like.
You know, Wow, Okay, I get it. Who were these
people who were making the wax figures? Like? Were they
like did they go to school like wax sculpting school? Like?

(09:06):
What was that about? A lot of them were starving artists,
And that's part of the reason why we don't really
know that much about them. The other thing is that
many of them were women. Why patients, Right, She entered
into it when she was a widow and had five kids,
And so I think that that sort of as an
indicator that sometimes people went into it to to sort
of learn an art in order that they would be
able to, uh, they might be able to turn some

(09:29):
money out of it and make a reputation for themselves.
What some of them were women. Yeah, many of them
were actually, and it was a family thing, like the
whole family. The kids would would learn how to do
it as well, would be passed down. Like Jennifer was

(09:56):
mentioning that they would try to get money. We could
get into this a little later. Here about one way
they could make money, probably the best way to make
Let's just get into it now, why not. Let's let's
get into this. Some of the artists who made waxes
had a kind of a side business making waxes as erotica.

(10:16):
Some societies were more strict about the circulation of this
material than others, and so some of the wax artists
might not have advertised it publicly that that's what they
were doing, but people might know that they had a
kind of a side hustle in wax of erotica. Often
they were kind of miniatures, erotic scenes, things like that,
and it was it was could be a risky business

(10:37):
because sometimes if the wax artists were discovered to have these,
they could be thrown in prison. What oh my gosh,
I have so many thoughts. Okay, so obviously know they're dirty,
dirty thoughts because like I can't even imagine a world
without porn, Matt. But that was like most of in history,

(11:01):
there was no like dirty things that you could see
on the internet. And so the only way you could
see dirty images is if some wax worker has like
a side business like apes. Come into this back room
and I've got some dirty wax scenes. I'm sure this

(11:22):
was actually more widespread than we than what we have
evidence for. I love that. I love that she said
they're miniatures, like they're they're sculpting little scenes, like pornographic
scenes that are like two inches tall. I mean, if
you use your imagination, you can think about all kinds
of things that could be made out of wax, because
you know, sex sales and maybeval Europe and even you know,

(11:44):
all the way up to Victorian Europe. It's just it's
just so taboo. Yeah, so of course we're not gonna
we can only speculate. That is funny. Now we can
go back to more sophisticated forms of wax sculpting maybe
to kind of clean up this episode. So I told you, Matt,
when I like the one time that I went to
Madam Tusso's wax museum, I was creeped out by like

(12:07):
how realistic some of the figures were, Like, were they
that realistic back then? You think they were, and that's
why they were so appealing. So the process of making
a wax figure hasn't changed very much over the past
two or three hundred years. A sculptor in the eighteenth century,
they would try to meet the person, study the person.

(12:30):
They might take sketches, they might measure their features using
a caliber. Then they would make a mold. Then they
would pour hot bees wax or vegetable wax into the
hollow mold and they would cool it until just a
thick layer of wax hardens around the the inside. And
then once the cast had been made, it can be tinted,

(12:53):
it can be painted, It can be adorned with hair
and teeth and nails. Facial hair and head hair was
died and styled um. Of course, sometimes people were bald
or they had different kind of you know, and that
was easier to do, probably faster, because inserting the hair
could take a lot of time. That had to warm
the wax and then insert it with a needle individually.

(13:16):
When it came to the clothes um in the eighteenth century,
sometimes they would um pay a great deal of attention
to the costume. Sometimes the people who are who are
being modeled will supply their own clothes. I mean it really,
it's an amazing art form, especially like the ones you know, listeners.
I know a lot of you have been to Madam
Tusso's or like some sort of wax museum, and some

(13:38):
of them are so realistic it's like scary. That word
creepy keeps coming up because you know, like you just
stare at it, like wait a second, are you are
you actually alive? Am? I am? I tripping right now?
I think now it's time to bring up some some
people that were important to wax sculpting Philippe Courteous, and

(13:58):
he's a great example of someone who made this more
of a professional thing. In the seventeen seventies, one of
the well known wax artists was Philippe Courteous, who was
a physician from Switzerland who got his start in medicine.
He in in medical school, people noticed that he was
very good at making models of organs. He didn't really

(14:21):
like the sight of blood, and he started to realize
that he could go into this, uh the business of
making artworks. A duke in Paris and invited to come
there and to set up a salon. He brought his
housekeeper and his niece and they set up in the
boulevard in Paris, and he starts to create wax portraits

(14:42):
and wax figures of some of the important people who
are coming to Paris. So his idea for the salon
was that that people could pay to kind of walk
around and see all the important people. There might be music,
there would be candle light because before the age of electricity,
and we could walk around and sort of study the
wax figures. This was a kind of unique way of

(15:05):
using wax works as a kind of a combination of
journalism and entertainment. Do you know what she means when
when she says salon. Essentially they were civilized parties where
it's it was a party, it was a gathering, but
the whole purpose was you know, personal growth, I guess,
and exchange ideas, right, Like, yeah, lots of coffee that'd

(15:28):
be caffeinated up and they'd be like trying to one
up there, constantly one up in each other. Obviously, I've
never been to a salon because they kind of went
out of style years ago. But this is the type
of event where Philip would start to showcase his works
and word of mouth got out and next thing you know,
he was making wax sculptures for the king. Yeah there's something, um,

(15:53):
there's something there ego feeding about it. Like I've had
the pleasure of having like fan made of me. You know,
people will send me fan art to Instagram and stuff
like that, and it's like, oh, like I get an
ego boost, like someone took the time to like sketch
or or digitally, you know, paint or or whatever the
medium is this impression of what I look like now

(16:17):
seventeen seventies, this is starting to lead up to a
tumultuous time in French history. You know, the commoners are
getting fed up and soon we have the French Revolution.
So in in a way, Philippe Courteous was a journalist
because he had a mission to get as many of
these wax models out to the general public as possible,

(16:39):
to be more connected with with these people. I guess
I know that sounds kind of weird, though, No, I
totally get that because you know, today in the modern era,
we take for granted. You know, you can turn on
the news at any time or open the internet, and
see a picture of world leaders of celebrities. You know
it's it's right there at a finger too. But before

(17:01):
any of that happened, it was journalism compared with art, right,
so it was kind of like photojournalism, but like way
more laborious. Yeah this again, this is before the photograph
by several decades. This must have been so mind blowing.
If you're a common person and you see a wax
sculpture of the king, and you knew about the king
your whole life. You've been paying taxes to the king,

(17:23):
and who heard a rumor that Marie ant when had
said let them eat cake, and you're like so mad
at her, And now you get to see a wax
sculpture of her and you're like that bitch that leads
us to the French Revolution. Philippe and his niece had
both continued to make wax models during the French Revolution
in Paris. At that time, the important people were changing.

(17:46):
The political turmoil meant that he had to be very
careful to move the politically unpopular wax works to the
back of the room, or even just completely discard them
and melt them down so that he didn't seem to
be favoring on, you know, political party more than the other.
And eventually, as the monarchy was thrown out and then

(18:06):
you had the revolutionaries, the figures in the museum kept changing,
and he and his niece were asked to make modeled
heads of some of the people who were not only
coming into power, but also some of the ones that
were falling out of favor. They made wax works of
the decapitated heads of many of the people who were guillotined,

(18:26):
some of whom they knew, some of whom had been
coming to the salon for years. Sometimes people would give
their clothes in order that they could be dressed in
a realistic way. So so it's very politically charged. And
you know, if we can imagine the you know, the niece,
especially because we think that that phil courteous might have
had a little bit of aversion to blood, that she

(18:47):
actually was was the one who was taking the bloody
heads in her you know, essentially in her lap and
make having to make a death cast out of those faces.
What what Wait a minute, so they would bring them
the the actual bloody heads. Yeah, yeah, they's a here here, Philip,

(19:12):
we have new heads in horrible French accent. French accent
is terrible. But yeah, there were so many people being
executed that he was. He was having a hard time
catch up with him. He's like people every day like
here's another head, and he's like, I just set it
down on the counter. I get to bad head later.
So he's like, hey, niece, niece, you're on severed head duty. Philip.

(19:47):
He died at the height of the French Revolution. It
was still going on, but he had he had taught
his niece everything he knew by that by the time
he passed away, she carried on the tradition. Her name
was Marie and in eventeen nine she married a gentleman
named Francois Too. So ah, yeah, I see where this

(20:09):
is headed. The person who's who was associated with him,
who's better known today is Marie Too. So than she
eventually inherited the business from him. They worked together and
they collaborated, and eventually she became an artist in her
own right. She after his death moved to England and
need to Know too and began to establish herself there

(20:33):
in London. And we think about to host museum in
London as a kind of permanent establishment. But she's just
one of many other waxworks artists. A lot of entertainers,
magic lantern artist and theater proprietors might have a waxworks
exhibition as part of their display. For just over thirty years,
she traveled across England, Ireland, all across Scotland with her

(20:57):
waxwork figures as a commercial entertainer. Partly because of Madam
Tusso's tremendous success and her longevity, the fact that her
museum still amazingly endures uh in a in a changing
world of visual technology. The fact is that it's also
overshadowed a lot of lesser well known wax worked artists. Wow,
so Philip's niece is Madame Toussau. That's crazy that she

(21:21):
started doing this in the seventeen hundreds and we still
have Madame Tussau's today. So Marie too, So definitely had
a prolific career. She lived into the eighteen fifties and
like Jennifer said, she made a name for herself. I
have so many thoughts on Marie Toussau. The fact that

(21:42):
this was like an artistry that a lot of women
were allowed to do is very very cool because obviously
back in that time, women were, you know, just second
class citizens, Like women just couldn't do a lot of jobs,
and women weren't respected. And the fact that she could
be an apprentice to her famous uncle and like learned

(22:03):
everything that he taught her is super cool. But also
that she hustled, Like she hustled so hard she put
all these wax sculptures in a wagon and she's like
trucking them all over the country. Like she hustled so
much that we know her name to this day. Yeah.
Her original museum was in London, that she established it

(22:24):
in eighteen thirty five, and it's bigger than ever today. Yeah.
So if it's still that popular, Matt, why are we
even talking about this on job sleep? That's a good question. Yeah.
So I would say that today wax museums are still
very niche. It's not like there's very many people in
the world right now that actually do this because there

(22:44):
are so many alternatives to wax sculptures as far as
ways to see people. According to Jennifer, there was even
a backlash against them. So what happened in the world
that made them less important by the eighteen thirties and
four days? When is the some of these these metropolitan
entertainments were falling out of a fashion and and so

(23:05):
you know, fashions change. And also around that time was
the invention of photography in eighteen thirty nine, so you know,
in some artists were already starting to look down their
noses at it or talking about them as puppets or
marionette And for an artist to be described as making
something that looked like a waxwork at two sods would
would have been seen as kind of a harsh criticism.
So even though it the kind of fair ground waxworks

(23:30):
became less popular, they didn't and they didn't die away completely.
In the early twentieth century, there were these stories about
drunken aristocrats running around the Sas Museum at night, so
it didn't have that kind of stamp of class that
tussed had had wanted it to have. But what's interesting
is that after the war, in the nineteen fifties and sixties,

(23:52):
especially wax work becomes embraced by British pop art. When
the Beatles commissioned the English pop artist Peter Blake to
make this leave for the record of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely
Hearts Club band, they asked for their favorite to so portraits,
including their own, to be incorporated in the in the collage.
It was also like just kind of went out of style.

(24:12):
It was like it was like a weird kind of
cultural shift. You know. Yeah, I could see how like like,
I've never met a wax sculptor, and you know, it's
pretty unusual. Like I am a stand up comedian and
that's already pretty unusual, But if someone told me that
they were a wax sculptor, I'd be like, what you what?

(24:35):
I had never realized that Sergeant Pepper's Only Hearts Club
band that cover had wax wax sculpture in it, or
wax sculptures. I think I thought it was like a
like a cardboard cutout. That's crazy that those are wax face.
Oh yeah, that's creepy. It's like every time I see
a wax figure that looks really realistic, I find it

(24:56):
like something about it really creeps me out. But I
I will say, Matt though, that as soon as I'm
rich and famous, you know, one of the first things
I'm gonna do is commission a wax sculpture of myself. Okay, well,
do you want me to make the wax sculpture or
do you do you want someone else to do it?
Because no, Matt, No, Matt. I want a professional who

(25:17):
knows what they're doing. Well, that's something like there's not
very many job Slete is produced for I Heart Radio
by Zealots manufacturing hand Forge Podcast for You. It's hosted
by us Helen Hong That's Me and Matt beat That's Me.
The show was conceived and produced by Jason Elliott, steve's

(25:39):
A Marquis, and Anthony Savini. Our editor is Tommy Nichol,
Our researcher is Amelia Paulka, our production coordinator is Angie Hymes,
and theme music is by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. Special
thanks to our I Heart Radio team led by Nikki Etre,
Katrina Norvell, Ali Cantor, Mangesh Hattie Kador, Will Pearson, Connell,

(26:00):
Byrne and Bob Pittman.