Death masks: What lurks in Firestone

If you find yourself deathly afraid of entering Firestone Library, there may be a good reason.

Among the rows of carrels and books of Firestone Library hide a collection of death masks — plaster molds made of people's faces soon after their deaths. Firestone houses more than 100 death masks, according to reference librarian and archivist Margaret Sherry, which were donated by a man named Laurence Hutton.

Hutton's family gave the library his death mask collection "not long after the library opened in 1948," Sherry said. Though Hutton had no academic connection with the University, Sherry said she suspects Princeton was chosen for his masks' home because the University boasts a large and rather well known theater collection as well.

Hutton, who died in 1904, wrote several books about the theater as well as one about death masks entitled "Portraits in Plaster." In addition to the collection of death masks, Hutton was an avid collector of various literary objects such as manuscripts written in the handwriting of the author.

The mask donor had many friends in high places. "He knew everybody — actors, writers, politicians," Sherry said. His correspondences with celebrities such as Edwin Booth and Helen Keller are stored in Firestone's rare books department.

According to Sherry, the story of Hutton's infatuation with masks started small. "He was in an antique store one day looking at a figurine," she recounted. "A little boy came in with a death mask in his hand and asked the antique dealer if it was worth anything."

Though the antique dealer believed the mask to be worthless, it piqued Hutton's interest. Hutton asked the little boy where he found the mask and the boy responded that there was a pile of masks in a dumpster around the corner from the shop. Hutton found the masks and took them.

"He saved them," Sherry said. But Hutton's death mask collecting did not end there. He began to travel all over the world, she said, searching for more masks. "He found them in shops," she noted.

Sherry explained that the masks are all copies of the original death masks. "They are not the actual masks taken off [the deceased's face]," she said. Also, not all of the masks were made post mortem. "A famous person would be approached [by an artist]" who would ask to be allowed to make a mask of that person, Sherry said.

The collection contains the faces of many famous people, including Napoleon and Beethoven, Sherry noted. The masks of English writers William Blake and John Keats are on display in the Scribner room in Firestone. But the rest of the collection has not been on display since the 1990s, Sherry said.

Though the death masks remain unseen for now, their notoriety has increased in recent years. "We've had some publicity about them in the last few years," Sherry said. So while Princeton students research for their JPs and theses and study for midterms among the bookcases, somewhere in the realms of Firestone library lurk one hundred faces looking back at them.