Plaster cast of a trefoil arch made between 1840-1870 in Salisbury.

Plaster cast of a trefoil arch.

Plaster cast of a trefoil arch, made between 1840-1870 on Salisbury. The original in stone was made in the early 16th century for the Chantry Chapel of Bishop Audley at Salisbury Cathedral.

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.

In the last decade of the 19th century and in the first decade of the 20th century, enthusiasm for acquiring new plaster casts and electrotypes for the V&A began to wane. A Report of the Committee of Re-Arrangement, produced by the Board of Education in July 1908, had a section entitled 'The Question of Casts'. In this report, proposals to expand the cast collection to include examples of the development of British architecture were rejected.

However, a large donation of casts of medieval sculpture and architecture from churches and cathedrals in England was received from the Royal Architectural Museum of the Architectural Association in 1916. That museum had been founded in 1851 by a group of architectural professionals lead by George Gilbert Scott. By the 1870s it housed over 4500 casts from English church portals, tombs, and windows. Many of these casts were assembled by John Ruskin (1819-1900) and William Burges (1827-1881), respectively. In the early 20th century the focus of the teachers at the Association shifted somewhat from Gothic to more classical styles, and the Royal Architectural collections were deemed to be no longer of use for students; nor did they have sufficient room to house them. The casts were donated to the V&A in 1916, and the premises of the Royal Architectural Association Museum were sold in 1917.

REPRO.A.1916-748