Feature

Madame Tussauds: creating magic with wax

Sabrina Hasan Shoily

What comes to your mind when I say 'One of the major tourist attractions in the world where you can see/touch/take photographs with your favourite celebrities'? Yes! It's the very famous Madame Tussauds wax museum situated in various major cities around the world. I am sure many of us have visited this wonderful place but how many of us know the history of it? Well, let's try to put some light on the history of Madame Tussauds.

Marie Tussaud (17611850), born Marie Grosholtz in Strasbourg, France, worked as a housekeeper for Dr. Philippe Curtius, a physician skilled in wax modelling. Curtius taught Tussaud the art of wax modelling. In 1765, Curtius made a waxwork of Marie-Jeanne du Barry, Louis XV's mistress. A cast of that mould is the oldest work currently on display. The first exhibition of Curtius' waxworks was shown in 1770, and attracted a large audience. The exhibition moved to the Palais Royal in Paris in 1776. He opened a second location on Boulevard du Temple in 1782, the "Caverne des Grands Voleurs", a precursor to the later Chamber of Horrors.

Tussaud created her first wax figure, of Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire, in 1777. Other famous persons she modelled at that time include Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Benjamin Franklin. During the French Revolution she made wax death masks of prominent victims. She would search through corpses to find the decapitated heads of the citizens which the death masks were to depict. When Curtius died in 1794, he left his collection of waxworks to Marie. In 1802, she went to London. As a result of the Franco-English war, she was unable to return to France, so with her collection she travelled throughout Great Britain and Ireland exhibiting her collection. For a time, it was displayed at the Lyceum Theatre. She established her first permanent exhibition on Baker Street in London in 1835 (on the "Baker Street Bazaar").

One of the main attractions of her museum was the Chamber of Horrors. This part of the exhibition included some victims of the French Revolution and also newly created figures of murderers and other criminals. The name was given by a contributor to Punch in 1845.

Other famous people were added to the exhibition, including Horatio Nelson, and Sir Walter Scott. Some of the sculptures done by Tussaud herself still exist. In 1842, she made a self portrait which is now on display at the entrance of her museum.

The museum moved to its current location on Marylebone Road in 1884. In 1925 a fire destroyed many of the figures, but the moulds survived, allowing the historical waxworks to be remade.

Madame Tussaud's wax museum has now grown to become a major tourist attraction in London, incorporating the London Planetarium in its west wing. It has expanded with branches in Amsterdam, Las Vegas, New York City, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, with additional locations scheduled to open in Hollywood and Washington, D.C. Today's wax figures at Tussauds include historical and royal figures, film stars, sports stars and famous murderers. Known as "Madame Tussauds" museums, they are owned by a leisure company called Merlin Entertainments, following the acquisition of The Tussauds Group in May 2007.

Visiting Madame Tussauds is an unique experience in itself. Once you enter the museum, its fascinating ambience and magical creations will take you to a different world. Sometimes, you might get confused as to certain 'people' are really human or stautes. If you belong to the group of people who haven't been to Madame Tussauds yet, make sure you visit it next time you have a holiday trip to any of the aforementioned places. Trust me, you will have an experience of a lifetime which you are bound to cherish forever, like me!