The “Venus de Milo.” The “Discobolus.” “The Seated Scribe.” None of those or other great sculptures may be available as gifts this holiday season, but precise reproductions, made from molds of the originals, are.
As gifts go, “it’s original,” said Sophie Prieto, the head of the Plaster Cast Workshop of the GrandPalaisRmn, the organization that works with all of France’s national museums.
Ms. Prieto had just set a 15-inch plaster copy of Alexander the Great’s foot back in its place on a wooden pallet in the workshop’s main corridor and moved into its airy reception hall. In the corner, to her left, loomed a wingless copy of the Louvre’s almost 11-foot-tall “Winged Victory of Samothrace” statue.
And as the atelier’s archive has molds of more than 6,000 artworks, buyers will not be short of choice. “We have objects from all times and periods,” Ms. Prieto said, “from prehistory to the ’50s.”
Founded in 1794, the workshop was established in the bowels of the newly created Louvre to create plaster casts of sculptures for its own display and to provide French art schools with much-needed reproductions. (To be the best, “you need to see the best,” Ms. Prieto said.)
In the 1930s it moved into a part of the Chaillot Palace, opposite the Eiffel Tower, then, in 1997, moved again — to a three-level building totaling 3,500 square meters (almost 38,000 square feet) in Saint-Denis, a suburb of Paris.
Here, seven molder-casters and two patina artists create reproductions — accurate to every last chip and scratch — for an international clientele of public institutions, contemporary artists and private individuals. Ms. Prieto said that the atelier’s commissions have included replacing a third of Versailles’s garden statues with copies created from marble-dust resin and supplying Jeff Koons with five classical sculptures for the artist’s 2013 series “Gazing Ball.” (“He comes here quite often,” Ms. Prieto said of Mr. Koons.)
During a workshop tour on a recent workday, Ms. Prieto paused at the entrance to the main corridor. Like much of the building, the lofty passageway was five meters, or about 16 feet, high and lined to the ceiling with shelves crowded with busts and small artworks.
“Prototypes,” Ms. Prieto said. “We go to the museum, we do the mold, then we do one plaster reproduction.” Should the mold break or degrade, the atelier would make another from the prototype because museums generally give permission to copy an artwork only once.
Occasionally, the atelier’s archives contain all that is left of a work that has been stolen, broken or destroyed. Case in point: the celebrated “Smiling Angel” statue at Reims Cathedral in northeastern France. Damaged in 1914, the statue was restored using the atelier’s prototype as a model.
In a plaster-streaked workroom, Arnaud Briand, a master molder-caster, stood before a cluttered workbench where a bronze Art Nouveau-style sculpture of a dancing woman about 10 inches tall was half covered in a thick paste.
Mr. Briand, 50, had used a brush to apply the paste, a blend of silicone and a liquid catalyst. Once it dried, it would be accurate to five microns — the depth of a fingerprint — so “it captures everything” about the sculpture, he said.
When the paste layer was about one centimeter thick, Mr. Briand would strengthen it by placing squares of flexible fiberglass on top. And to ensure the mold would hold its shape, the entire piece would be covered with a mixture of plaster, water, acrylic and, later, more fiberglass squares that, together, would form a hard outer shell.
Though such silicone molds remain the gold standard, an artwork would be 3-D scanned and printed if it needed to be resized or was too fragile to be handled. “We have to adapt to new techniques,” said Mr. Briand, who in 2015 was named a Meilleur Ouvrier de France, or Best Worker of France, in his field.
Once molded, an artwork is cast in plaster, resin, bronze or terra cotta. (The workshop has been experimenting with casting in recycled materials, including a blend of used coffee grounds and stale bread from Paris cafes, but “we’re just at the beginning,” Ms. Prieto said.)
To create a classic plaster cast, the two interior sides of a mold are painted with a layer of wet plaster approximately two-tenths of an inch thick, then lined with a series of palm-size balls of cactus fiber that also had been dipped in wet plaster. (Ms. Prieto wrote in a later email that the balls are added to strengthen the cast’s structure, a technique developed in the 19th century. The cactus is sourced from a company based in France.)
When it all is dry, the two sides of the cast are pressed together, using more wet plaster as a glue.
In an adjacent workroom, the patina painters complete the cast, transforming its surface into what looks like aged bronze, ivory, wood or marble.
To achieve the effect, painters apply multiple layers of a translucent base color to the plaster piece. Nicknamed the Sauce, the color is a mix of lacquer and the pigments stored in recycled glass yogurt pots on the workroom’s paint-splashed shelves.
They then apply encaustic wax, which is a mix of beeswax, damar resin and pigment: It is added in subtly different shades of dark and light to imitate dust and centuries of handling.
For bespoke pieces ordered from the atelier, prices range from about 500 euros to 20,000 euros ($525 to $21,015). Ready-made casts created in series, often in collaboration with private workshops under the supervision of the atelier and using the atelier’s molds, prototypes and patina recipes, are sold at the Louvre and the atelier’s online shop.
In January, Arnaud Cluzel, a financial consultant in Paris, ordered himself a gift from the workshop: a plaster copy of the 18th-century statue “Baigneuse” (“Bather”), a statue by Étienne Maurice Falconet that Mr. Cluzel had fallen in love with when he saw it in the Louvre.
“The quality is remarkable,” Mr. Cluzel, 33, said of the statue that now stands on a tall plinth in his living room.
What the artwork adds to his home? “A touch of elegance,” he said.
The post In France, This Workshop Copies the World’s Great Sculptures appeared first on New York Times.
