REPRESENTING LIFE WITH REMAINS:
Human Temporal Bone & Abalone Wax Model
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Representing Life with Remains : Human Temporal Bone & Abalone Wax Model by Group 4 OL2017 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 Unported license.
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TEMPORAL BONE
This specific temporal bone was on the left side of the skull. There are two temporal bones on each side of the skull, and they are located at the bottom of the same. They are irregular bones that contain the organ of the audition, so they are considered the structure of the ear.
Courtesy of UCL Pathology Collections
It represents a life, a human life. But it also represents the medical community in its posterior life as an object used for study. So we could easily say that it has had three different lives, at least two. The first one, when it was part of the living human. The second one, when it turned into an object used to learn about the human body, so it was made to be understanded and used by doctors or people related to medicine. And the third one, if one would like to make the difference, would be the object like part of a collection.
The second and the third one can seem similar, in both situations the object is used for study, but the point is that when the object was made at the beginning it had not the meaning of object that we are talking about now, and that meaning is one of the reasons to be in a collection.
Therefore nowadays is used in a similar way than the reason it was made for at the beginning, to study.
What is represented is the temporal bone itself and taking into account that it’s in the pathology museum it probably also represents some disease. As well as Pathology is the field of medicine that study the diseases in human body. Nevertheless, there is not much information about this concrete bone and how I am not an expert on the field I cannot determinate which kind of disease it has.
"Objects have an initial value because they perform a function for the society or the individuals within it." (Caple, 2006). A human temporal bone is valuable because of its human origin. Not because the bone material is value in itself, that it’s not. So it is valuable because when it was created it had a purpose and indeed it probably was very valuable because at that time skeletons and human bones were “badly needed by medical students and artist” (Hoppé, 1937).
Object Specifications
Courtesy of UCL Pathology Museum
Period: Around 1920s
Place: London, United Kingdom
Material: Human bone
Dimensions: 7 cm long
Development of the skull
This is the creation of the bone itself, with the rest of the skull bones. Then it has been separated from the rest of the skull – once the human was death – and has been joined to a piece of wood through a small metal bar so that it is fully exposed.
ABALONE WAX MODEL
This model is made of a real abalone shell, collected in Normandy, France, and of a wax body, probably made in Paris in the mid-19th century. It replicates a green ormer, or haliotis tuberculata, a gastropode treasured for its flesh and the mother of pearl lining its shell.
Courtesy UCL, Grant Museum of Zoology
This wax model was most probably produced for a teaching collection in order to be used in comparative anatomy classes. It uses a shell, what remains of the abalone after it dies and its body decays, and supplements it with an artificial body made to last, so that those who cannot observe a living abalone can see an almost perfect replica. The shell is the part of the object that actually belonged to a living being, and yet, the vibrancy and the shine the wax body make it look more life-like. Wax as a material cleverly imitates 'fleshiness', as it seems to have the same give, the same softness an actual abalone has. In this case, incorporating what remains of the dead abalone into a wax model perpetuates the link between the model and the abalone it is modelled on. Yet, despite using a part of one individual of the green ormer species, this wax model was made to represent the entire species to comparative anatomy students, who would study it in order to gain insight into this corner of the animal kingdom.
Object Specifications
From Grant Museum of Zoology, P47
Period: mid to late 19th Century
Place of manufacture: Paris, France (uncertain)
Material: wax, real shell, glass dome, wood base
Dimensions:
length: 13 cm; height: 4 cm; width: 6 cm
A Living Green Ormer
Why have we displayed these objects together?
This temporal bone and this abalone wax model both incorporate body parts into their representation of living being. This means that these objects only exist in relation with the individuals whose remains they use. And yet, their function is to go beyong the representation of these individuals and stand for the entire species, which is made possible by the lack of information on the person whose bone it is and the abalone whose shell it is. Because we don't know the particulars, we end up seeing these objects as a general type. These two objects toe the line between artificial and natural, as they are partly made of body parts while still having been manufactured. Even if the temporal bone is not supplemented with a wax imitation of the flesh surrounding it, it has been prepared for exhibition, and thus became a museum object, and not simply a person's bone.
A big difference, though, is that while the temporal bone is displayed by itself, when it comes to the abalone, the most important part of the object when it comes to teaching is the wax body, which provides anatomical information. The shell serves to complement the wax body so that it looks more realistic, more believable.Moreover, the wax model is standing for an entire abalone, it represents the animal itself, whereas the temporal bone is only part of a skull; to see a living person when looking at the bone, the viewer has to use their imagination a lot more than when they are confronted with the abalone wax model.