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Journal of Design History 2007 20(1):17-27; doi:10.1093/jdh/epl039
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© The Author [2007]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Design History Society. All rights reserved.

Invisibility: Memory, Masks and Masculinities in the Great War

Katherine Feo

Victoria and Albert Museum, University of Westminster

E-mail: katherine.feo{at}alumni.rca.ac.uk


  Abstract

This paper examines the technological, medical and cultural circumstances that prompted the creation of tin facial prosthetics during the First World War. It argues that advancing industrial munitions technology far outpaced the contemporary, craft-based attempts at human recovery in the fields of plastic surgery and prosthetic design during the war. This exposed design ‘lag’ was materialized in the inadequacy of the instantly obsolete and largely unwearable tin masks. In their ultimate futility as lasting prosthetic devices, these artefacts have themselves become uncanny material mementos of war, inadvertently reproducing and projecting the loss fundamental to the violent conflict that they sought to conceal.

Key Words: crafts • First World War • masculinity • plastic surgery • prosthetics • weapons technology


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