Playing with Dead Faces

I grew up playing with dead faces. It’s true. In my youth I spent many hours designing deathly gri- maces for a skull that my father gave me as a gift. In fact, I clearly remember the day he presented me with the skull and the other materials I would need to build dead human faces – moulding wax, make-up and sculpting tools. Hours would pass as I built noses, eyes, mouths and ears that were then worked onto the skull and blended into the sur- rounding waxy visage. I was particularly proud of the wounds I made, suggesting a horrible trauma had affected the decedent’s face. These memories mark the heyday of my postmortem facial recon- struction years. I was between six and ten years old.