THe Secret Lives of Ancient Plaster Casts
By Abbey L. R. Ellis
“Yeah, I did take a piece of marble from the site… [laughs] It wasn’t in use! They have this kind of like rubbish dump and I was like ‘oh I’ll have a bit of that!’ [laughs] It was slightly worked, so it was worth taking, but I wouldn’t take a piece of plaster. No. Well, the material itself is kind of uninteresting. And… you know, of course, it doesn’t have the object history that we’re interested in.”
As I was interviewing a group of classical archaeology Ph.D. candidates as part of my own doctoral research into the values associated with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century plaster cast reproductions of ancient Greek and Roman sculptures (Figure 1), our conversation turned to the candidates’ excavation work.
This quote from one of the interviewees really struck me. Marble, even as a discarded chip, was presented as a treasure, worthy of saving from a rubbish dump and retaining as a keepsake; but plaster, by contrast, was deemed “uninteresting”—totally unworthy of the same attention.
Figure 1: Plaster cast reproduction of the Heracles Lansdowne by Scopas. Original dated around 350 BC. This reproduction was produced after 1792, when the piece was restored by Carlo Albacini. Gallery of Classical Art in Hostinné. Credit: Zde, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Such negative attitudes towards the material of plaster, while rarely stated so openly, can be seen in the way in which archaeologists and art historians have valued (or rather, devalued) plaster objects from antiquity to the present. Plaster – humble, friable, and even described as “dull” – rarely receives the reverence given to works in marble, bronze, and terracotta. In archaeological scholarship, it has often been dismissed as a mere tool of the ancient sculptor’s workshop: a means to an end, or a disposable prototype.
Yet, as I argue in my recent co-edited volume, Ancient Plaster: Casting Light on a Forgotten Sculptural Material (Liverpool University Press, 2025), this viewpoint does a disservice not only to the material itself, but to our understanding of ancient creativity and the social worlds in which art was made and used.
By looking closely at the evidence, we find a more complex story: one in which plaster casts could serve a range of roles, from practical aids in artistic production to valued works of art, votive offerings, and much more besides.
Plaster has been utilized across the Mediterranean for millennia. Made from lime or gypsum, it was used for everything from Neolithic walls and floors to elaborate Roman architectural ornaments. Its own unique qualities – lightness, affordability, and malleability – likely made it an appealing material for ancient craftsmen.
Yet the prevailing assumption about ancient plaster casts is that they were used exclusively as tools in the workshops of ancient artists. According to this view, casts taken from metal reliefs or vessels acted only as intermediaries, helping artisans transfer motifs across different media: from metal to stone, from one object to another.
Certainly, we have some evidence to support this. For example, a plaster cast believed to have originated from the city of Memphis, Egypt, depicting the gorgon Medusa, bore measuring lines and small reference holes on its surface when it was discovered, strongly suggesting it was used to copy the image onto new reliefs (Figure 2). However, to take this evidence and extrapolate it to all plaster casts, an approach often seen in archaeological scholarship, is overly simplistic.
Figure 2: Plaster cast representing Medusa. c.425–25 BC. Roemer-und Pelizaeus-Museum, Hildesheim. Credit: Abbey Ellis
A second cast representing Medusa, found in the Temple of Indented Niches at Ai Khanoum, Afghanistan, offers further food for thought (Figure 3). Here, the context is religious: the cast was likely present in the temple before its destruction, and could plausibly have been a votive offering, dedicated by an ancient worshipper. Plaster, in this setting, perhaps functioned as an affordable alternative to a votive made in precious metals or stone.
Another intriguing cache of plaster casts comes from Begram, Afghanistan, where a basement room yielded a remarkable assemblage: Indian ivory furniture, Greco-Roman glassware (Figure 4), and a suite of plaster medallions—some bearing striking high-relief busts (Figure 5). Traditional scholarship, flummoxed by the juxtaposition of “valuable” objects such as the ivories and glassware and “practical” plaster casts, insisted that the latter could only be workshop tools. But this assumption falters under scrutiny.
The Begram medallions lack clear signs of workshop use: their surfaces bear no measuring lines or reference points. Some have suspension holes, and their high-relief style and careful execution parallel marble, terracotta, and wooden medallions known elsewhere from Roman homes and tombs (Figure 6). In other words, their forms and functions fit comfortably within the repertoire of Roman decorative art. The plaster pieces could have adorned walls, furniture, or sacred spaces, just as their counterparts made in more “prestigious” materials once did.
Ancient texts also reinforce the idea that plaster objects could have functioned as works of art in their own right. The Roman satirist Juvenal poked fun at social climbers who filled their homes with plaster busts of philosophers, placing plaster statuary within domestic contexts.
Why does all this matter? Because our readiness to pigeonhole plaster objects as workshop tools has broader consequences. It shapes what we preserve, study, and display; it narrows the stories we tell about ancient art and society.
The fate of Roman marble copies of Greek bronzes is instructive. For decades, these “copies” were valued only for what they revealed about lost Greek masterpieces—a functional, instrumental view that ignored their own intrinsic artistry and cultural meaning (Figure 7). Only in the past few decades have scholars begun to appreciate these works as products of a uniquely Roman culture, complete with their own social value.
Figure 7: Roman marble copy of the Tyrannicides Group, composed of Aristogeiton (left) and Harmodios (right). Original made in bronze and dated around 475 BC. Naples, National Archaeological Museum. Credit: Ismoon, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
We must do the same for plaster. Ancient plaster casts deserve to be seen as more than means to an end. Their portability, accessibility, and diversity of form allowed them to function in multiple ways in the workshop, household, temple, and tomb. Yes, they could be put to use as tools—but also as display pieces, votives, and testaments to the creativity and adaptability of ancient artisans and their audiences.
Further reading:
Ellis, A. L. R. , & Payne, E. M. (Eds.). (2025). Ancient Plaster: Casting Light on a Forgotten Sculptural Material. Liverpool University Press.
Frederiksen, R., & Marchand, E. (Eds.). (2010). Plaster Casts: Making, Collecting and Displaying from Classical Antiquity to the Present. Walter de Gruyter.
About the author
Abbey L. R. Ellis is based at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. Her research considers ancient Greek and Roman sculpture, plaster casts ancient and modern, and historic reproductions more generally. In 2021, she was awarded her Ph.D. by the University of Leicester’s School of Museum Studies. In addition to her work at the Institute, she is a Guest Lecturer at the Princeton Academy of Art.
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