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After the First World War, American sculptor Anna Coleman Ladd (1878-1939) ran the Studio for Portrait Masks in Paris, administered by the American Red Cross. With her four assistants, she made lifelike masks for disfigured French soldiers. Her workroom photographs document the "before and after" faces of each disfigured (left) and masked (right) soldier. After the patient's injury and/or restorative surgeries had healed, Ladd would take a plaster cast of his face. A mask was then crafted out of paper-thin galvanized copper and carefully painted to match skin color. Some even had real-hair mustaches. Every mask took at least month to make. Neither function nor mobile expression could be restored, of course, but after their "plastic surgery, " the grateful soldiers were able to return to their families and rejoin society without being shunned. In 1932, Ladd was made a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor.
