Plaster cast of the Apprentice Pillar and the South-East Corner of Rosslyn Chapel made by the engineers at South Kensington under Giovanni Franchi. The original was made by an unknown artist in about 1450.

Plaster cast of The Apprentice Pillar and the South-East Corner of Rosslyn Chapel depicting the elaborate sculptures of figures and ornate foliage that cover the chapel's origial stone.

Cast of The Apprentice Pillar and the South-East Corner of Rosslyn Chapel created in plaster in London about 1871 by the engineers at the South Kensington Museum and supervised by Giovanni Franchi. It was acquired by the Museum in 1871 at a cost of £76 5s. The cast shows the skill of both the original stone carvers and the casters who reproduced it due to the details that cover the piece. The original section of the Rosslyn Chapel was sculpted by an unknown artist in stone in Roslin, Scotland about 1450.

Making plaster copies is a centuries-old tradition that reached the height of its popularity during the 19th century. The V&A's casts are of large-scale architectural and sculptural works as well as small scale, jewelled book covers and ivory plaques, these last known as fictile ivories.

The Museum commissioned casts directly from makers and acquired others in exchange. Oronzio Lelli, of Florence was a key overseas supplier while, in London, Giovanni Franchi and Domenico Brucciani upheld a strong Italian tradition as highly-skilled mould-makers, or formatori.

Some casts are highly accurate depictions of original works, whilst others are more selective, replicating the outer surface of the original work, rather than its whole structure. Like a photograph, they record the moment the cast was taken: alterations, repairs and the wear and tear of age are all reproduced in the copies. The plasters can also be re-worked, so that their appearance differs slightly from the original from which they were taken.

To make a plaster cast, a negative mould has to be taken of the original object. The initial mould could be made from one of several ways. A flexible mould could be made by mixing wax with gutta-percha, a rubbery latex product taken from tropical trees. These two substances formed a mould that had a slightly elastic quality, so that it could easily be removed from the original object. Moulds were also made from gelatine, plaster or clay, and could then be used to create a plaster mould to use for casting.
When mixed with water, plaster can be poured into a prepared mould, allowed to set, and can be removed to produce a finished solid form. The moulds are coated with a separating or paring agent to prevent the newly poured plaster sticking to them. The smooth liquid state and slight expansion while setting allowed the quick drying plaster to infill even the most intricate contours of a mould.
Flatter, smaller objects in low relief usually require only one mould to cast the object. For more complex objects, with a raised surface, the mould would have to be made from a number of sections, known as piece-moulds. These pieces are held together in the so-called mother-mould, in order to create a mould of the whole object. Once the object has been cast from this mother-mould, the piece-moulds can be easily removed one by one, to create a cast of the three-dimensional object.

The intricately decorated pillar, walls and ceiling arches are cast from a corner of Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland. The chapel was built near Edinburgh for William Sinclair, 3rd Earl of Orkney. The decoration illustrates the skill of the chapel’s original stone carvers, who covered its surface with elaborate sculptures of figures and ornate foliage. The pillar is known as the ‘Apprentice’ or ‘Prentice Pillar’ because of a later legend that tells of the murder of the gifted apprentice who carved the pillar by his jealous master.

This cast was made by engineers at South Kensington, working under the supervision of Giovanni Franchi (about 1832–70), who ran a successful plaster cast manufacturers in London. It is also an impressive achievement, reproducing the complex decoration and undercutting of the stone. The Museum commissioned the cast in 1871, just before the Cast Courts opened in 1873.

REPRO.1871-59