45 Wonderfully Terrible Wax Statues Found Around The World

Well, these figures are certainly supposed to be someone famous. Sure, they might be labeled as Michael Jackson, Lady Gaga, or Heath Ledger. But that’s really only on paper.

If these statues didn’t have a nameplate telling you who they’re supposed to be, you’d probably have a great time trying to guess which celebrity they were even going for.

Honestly, that’s part of what makes them so entertaining. But it also goes to show that good wax sculpture is a genuine art form, and the people who do it well are seriously talented.

Wax sculpture actually has a very long history. According to Britannica, Ancient Egyptians used wax figures of gods in funeral ceremonies and placed them in graves, and many of those figures can still be found in museums today.

The ancient Greeks used them mostly as dolls for children, but also made small wax statues of gods for religious rituals. The Romans, meanwhile, used wax masks of their ancestors, which were kept by wealthy families and brought out for special occasions and funerals.

Throughout the Middle Ages, wax figures continued to play a role in churches and royal courts, where they were used to preserve the likenesses of kings and other important people.

There’s a good reason wax has stuck around as a material for so long. At room temperature, it’s easy to cut and shape. It melts smoothly at a low heat, which makes it simple to pour into molds. 

It blends well with coloring, so artists can match skin tones and other details. And its texture can be adjusted by mixing in different substances like oils or fats, giving sculptors a lot of control over the final result.

The person who really changed the game, though, was Marie Tussaud. Born in 1761, she learned wax sculpting from her mentor, Dr. Philippe Curtius, and went on to create figures of political leaders and even the severed heads of French Revolution victims. 

She eventually founded what became Madame Tussauds, and to this day, the museum’s process hasn’t changed all that much from how she originally did things back in the 1790s.

The museum has shared a detailed breakdown of how they work with celebrities to create their figures. First, the celebrity is invited in for a sitting where the sculptors take detailed measurements and photos. 

The team also spends time getting to know the person and picking up on their personality. They pay attention to whether they’re serious or funny, shy or playful. By capturing that energy, they’re able to make the wax figure feel that much more real.

If the celebrity can’t come in person, or if they’re a historical figure, the sculptors work from existing photos instead. Either way, they need more than 250 precise measurements and up to 300 photos before they even start.

From there, the sculptors build a clay model of the head and a metal skeleton for the body, which they layer with clay to form the right shape. Because wax shrinks as it cools, everything is made about two percent larger than the actual person. 

Molds are then made of the head and body separately, and a hot wax mixture is poured in and left to harden. The head alone takes around 18 kilograms of clay and about five weeks to finish.

Then comes the hair, which is one of the most time-consuming parts. Every single strand is inserted by hand using a fine needle, following the natural direction of growth. A full head of hair can mean over 10,000 individual strands, and the process takes up to six weeks. 

After that, the hair is washed, conditioned, cut, and styled to match the celebrity’s look. Even the eyelashes are inserted one by one and trimmed to match. 

Once the hair is done, coloring artists step in to paint the skin using tones they matched during the sitting. This part alone takes about five days for the head and two more for the hands. Then the eyes and teeth are added, which is what really brings the whole thing to life. 

Finally, the costume team steps in, sometimes recreating iconic outfits, sometimes working with designers who create pieces specifically for the figure. Some celebrities even donate clothes from their own wardrobes.

All in all, a single figure takes over 800 hours of work from a whole team of specialists. So when you look at the figures on this list and wonder what went wrong, the answer is probably that they didn’t get anywhere near that level of attention. 

And in a way, maybe that makes them impressive in their own right, considering what they had to work with. But it doesn’t make them any less funny to look at. Oh well, at least they gave us all a good laugh.

You might also like: 49 Times People Tried To Take A Pic And Ended Up With A Way Better Shot Than They Expected