The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-07-01
WAX DISPLAY FIGURES.

From the New York Commercial.
The business of making wax show
figures and all sorts of dummies for
general advertising purposes-but
more especially for store windows
has grown to immense proportions in
this country. New York easily leads
all the rest of the cities in the extern
sive employment of these devices, as
well as in their manufacture, but
Philadelphia and Chicago are good
seconds.
Wax forms or dummies" remark
ed Philadelphia dealer the other day,
have iron feet. Why have they iron
feet? To weight them down, so that
they will stand erect, of course. They
mustn't be top-heavy."
He stood in his workshop a room
as big as a concert hall All around
him helpers were making legs, heads,
hands, trunks, feet Floods of clear
light from the glazed roof fell upon
heaps of limbs, upon rows of heads,
upon mounds of bodies. The place
had CHASTITY look. 1t resembled the
scene of a massacre.
THE art of making show figures"
continued the dealer, has improved"
He took up in his hand the head of
a young girl. The red lips smiled re-
cured gracefully. The eyes were
bright. There was a dimple in the
cheek.
"A head like this" he said, lis worth
$15. Heads range in price from 81 to
$50 They are made of wax; they
are hollow; the eyes are of glass, and
the hair is human hair. I'll tell you
how they are made.
"Wax-a great quantity of it's
In, 10
consistency of water 1t is then pour
ed into a row of hollow moulds, the
moulds of heads, Shat stand awaiting
it. The moulds are hung up and shak-
en- out This process causes the wax
to cool and to adhere, in a crust, to
the mould's inside. The agitation is
kept up until the crust of wax has
reached the thickness that the oper-
ator requires, whereupon the hot wax,
the surplus, is poured back into the
kettle. About the mould which is
made in two halves, a jacket is placed.
and the contrivance is put away to
dry.
when the drying is complete the
mould is taken off and a man goes over
the wax head with a sharp instrument !
clearing out the nostrils and ears and |
smoothing away the lines created here |
and there by the junction of the |
mouId's halves. He also inserts, with !
deft movement, glass eyes in the empty |
eye-sockets.
Now the head passes to a girl-a |
girl with a strange sort of needle, the |
eye of which is open, or split al the |
top. The girl first puts on the eye |
brows. Next she puts on the hair. For |
this work she uses the same sort of |
needle. the hair being in every case hu-
man. For the cheaper heads, however, |
1t is Chinese hair a human, but very
lusterless. coarse variety.
Hands and feet are made, as a rule,
of papier mache, enameled and paint
ed a flesh color, so that they look like
the best wax. Indeed, feet, bodies,
legs and arms are made in hollow
moulds."
The artists cannot protect, cannot
copyright their work in any way.
Hence they are constantly being prey
ed upon by initators and thieves. A
dealer, for instance, will order an orig
inal head of a woman from a noted
maker of show figures. He will turn
out a masterpiece. The dealer will
make a mould of it and sell duplicates
of the head broadcast.
There were in the past only three or
four makers of show forms in Amer
lea. Now there are over two hundred.
The average workman at this business
makes from $40 to $25 a week The
artist of great ability makes from $40
to 500 Show forms of the best sort are
worth 800 and more apiece. They are
rented by their owners to shopkeepers
more often than they are sold outright,
the advantage of this method being
that the shopkeeper, through it, is able
to change his show forms often.