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Well, these figures are certainly supposed to be someone famous. Sure, they might be labeled as Michael Jackson, Lady Gaga, or Heath Ledger. But that’s really only on paper.
If these statues didn’t have a nameplate telling you who they’re supposed to be, you’d probably have a great time trying to guess which celebrity they were even going for.
Honestly, that’s part of what makes them so entertaining. But it also goes to show that good wax sculpture is a genuine art form, and the people who do it well are seriously talented.
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Wax sculpture actually has a very long history. According to Britannica, Ancient Egyptians used wax figures of gods in funeral ceremonies and placed them in graves, and many of those figures can still be found in museums today.
The ancient Greeks used them mostly as dolls for children, but also made small wax statues of gods for religious rituals. The Romans, meanwhile, used wax masks of their ancestors, which were kept by wealthy families and brought out for special occasions and funerals.
Throughout the Middle Ages, wax figures continued to play a role in churches and royal courts, where they were used to preserve the likenesses of kings and other important people.
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There’s a good reason wax has stuck around as a material for so long. At room temperature, it’s easy to cut and shape. It melts smoothly at a low heat, which makes it simple to pour into molds.
It blends well with coloring, so artists can match skin tones and other details. And its texture can be adjusted by mixing in different substances like oils or fats, giving sculptors a lot of control over the final result.
The person who really changed the game, though, was Marie Tussaud. Born in 1761, she learned wax sculpting from her mentor, Dr. Philippe Curtius, and went on to create figures of political leaders and even the severed heads of French Revolution victims.
She eventually founded what became Madame Tussauds, and to this day, the museum’s process hasn’t changed all that much from how she originally did things back in the 1790s.
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The museum has shared a detailed breakdown of how they work with celebrities to create their figures. First, the celebrity is invited in for a sitting where the sculptors take detailed measurements and photos.
The team also spends time getting to know the person and picking up on their personality. They pay attention to whether they’re serious or funny, shy or playful. By capturing that energy, they’re able to make the wax figure feel that much more real.
If the celebrity can’t come in person, or if they’re a historical figure, the sculptors work from existing photos instead. Either way, they need more than 250 precise measurements and up to 300 photos before they even start.
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From there, the sculptors build a clay model of the head and a metal skeleton for the body, which they layer with clay to form the right shape. Because wax shrinks as it cools, everything is made about two percent larger than the actual person.
Molds are then made of the head and body separately, and a hot wax mixture is poured in and left to harden. The head alone takes around 18 kilograms of clay and about five weeks to finish.
