by a search the secret police had conducted in his house. The only TRAVelING PORTals suspicious item they could find was his diary. Apparently it did not contain enough evidence to take him to prison, and he even got it Mari Lending back. In an artistic rage, and trying to make sure that his personal notes could not be read again by anyone, he burned his diary. The Master and Margarita remained secret even after his death in 1940, and could not be published until 1966, when the phrase became In the early 1890s, the Times of London reported on a lawsuit on the 1 Times ( London ), more frequently used by dissidents to show their resistance to the pirating of plaster casts. With reference to a perpetual injunction June 2, 1892. state regime. In the early nineties, when the KGB archives were partly granted by the High Court of Justice, Chancery Division, it was 2 Times ( London ), opened, his diary was found. Apparently, during the confiscation, announced that “ various persons in the United Kingdom of Great February 14, 1894. the KGB had photocopied the diary before they returned it to the Britain and Ireland have pirated, and are pirating, casts and models ” author. made by “ D. BRUCCIANI and Co., of the Galleria delle Belle Arti, The best guardians are oftentimes ultimately the ones you would 40. Russell Street, Covent Garden ” and consequently severely vio­ least expect. lated the company’s copyright “ which is protected by statute. ” The defendant, including his workmen, servants, and agents, was warned against “ making, selling, or disposing of, or causing, or permitting to be made, sold, or disposed of, any casts or models taken, or copied, or only colourably different, from the casts or models, the sole right and property of and in which belongs to the said D. Brucciani and Co. ”1 Furthermore the public was notified that “ any person or persons ” with future desires of making, selling, disposing of etc., models or casts from other people’s models or casts “ will likewise be proceeded against. ” Two years later, the tone had become harsher. The defendant had obviously pursued his dark deeds of pirating, making, selling, and disposing of copies made of copyrighted copies, thus infringing on the earlier ruling. In the new motion the defendant was ordered to file an affidavit of all the casts and models as the sole right and prop­ erty of Brucciani & Co, return any casts and models to the plaintiff, and carry the full cost of the motion. In addition, the Times reported that the perpetrator “ might be ordered to stand committed to the Holloway Prison for his contempt in infringing the said Injunction. ”2 Anglo­Italian Domenico Brucciani, master plaster caster for some of the finest British art institutions, had established a prolific busi­ ness of architectural monuments, fragments, ornaments, sculpture, and other thinkable and unthinkable miscellanea manufactured in plaster, spanning from fossils to a wide assortment of dismembered body parts. Sculpture and antiquities produced by this distinguished formatore could from 1864 on be admired in an elegant gallery in Covent Garden and otherwise be ordered from sales catalogues. From early on, Brucciani was involved in the grand endeavor of building an eclectic, imperial collection of architectural monuments at the South Kensington Museum ( from 1899, Victoria and Albert 196 197 Mari Lending Traveling Portals 3 Stephen Bayley, Museum ). Among the casts commissioned from Brucciani was the copy to the original. ”5 Multiplied, reproduced, and fraudulent in the 5 Rosalind Krauss, “ Plaster cast of Domenico full­scale Pórtico de la Gloria, casted on­site in 1866, noteworthy for sense that they were translated beyond the material integrity of the “ The Originality of the Brucciani’s Portico de Avant-Garde, ” in la Gloria, Santiago dictating the dimensions of the imposing skylit Architecture Courts wooden originals ( with surfaces meticulously worked to look like The Originality of the de Compostella [sic], ” inaugurated in 1873 ( later renamed the Cast Courts ), but also due to they had been treated with black tar over a millennium ), the casts Avant-Garde and Other Victoria and Albert Modernist Myths, Museum, http: / / www.vam. the superiority of the cast. Today, the V&A praises Brucciani’s cast of nevertheless carried an indisputable productive, even projective, Cambridge, Mass., 1986, ac.uk / users / node / 1977. the twelfth­century cathedral in Santiago de Compostela as “ equally dimension. Originating as identical copies made from the same mold p. 162. 4 Times ( London ), magnificent in ambition and execution. ”3 or produced in new series of reproductions, the singular cast poses 6 Henry Cole / The South May 26, 1880. Upon Brucciani’s death in 1880, the whole of his “ valuable Stock, questions of authorship ( of the copy ) and convey a distinctive indi­ Kensington Museum, “ Convention for Promoting Moulds, and Store Casts, ” produced under “ Royal and distinguished viduality, spanning from patination to their shifting contexts. In the Universally Reproductions patronage ” was announced for sale.4 And the stock was certainly course of history, many of the casts have been ruined or lost, and of Works of Art for the Benefit of Museums valuable, containing molds of the finest monuments at full scale, the molds they were made from were long ago worn out and discard­ of All Countries. ” molds that were not easily reproducible from the monuments in situ ed. The museological paradigm in which the traveling plaster portals due to increasingly strict preservation legislation in Europe. No sur­ belonged fell first out of fashion, then into oblivion. Left under the prise then that the purchaser, who continued the business as Bruc­ radar of architectural historiography is an elliptic history of dead ciani & Company, took legal action against one competitor pirating ends where contexts, objects, and traces of them tend to disappear. their work by having new molds made from their casts. This plagiarist, working out of Manchester, had been copying casts without even PlasTER CASTS AS Mass MedIUM bothering to erase the Brucciani signature on the copied copies One key initiative in the distribution of manifold versions of singu­ before putting them onto the market as cheaper goods. Therefore, lar monuments was the “ Convention for Promoting Universally and very much like the warning against pirating that introduces most Reproductions of Works of Art for the Benefit of Museums of DVDs today, Brucciani & Co reprinted the 1892 announcement from All Countries ” that Henry Cole, director of the South Kensington the Times, including the newspaper’s logo, in their regularly updated Museum, had fifteen European crown princes sign during the 1867 series of sale catalogues. International Exposition in Paris ( fig. 1 ). In encouraging the produc­ Even though these Brucciani designs were described as meritori­ tion of monuments in media such as casts, electrotypes, and photo­ ous, the lawsuit revolved around minor objects, depicting “ foliage, graphs, the convention envisioned an apparatus for the circulation apples and leaves, and groups of peaches ” produced for use in art of architecture across the world. Recommendations were given for schools. In comparison to the grandiose cast of the Pórtico de la the formation of national commissions to select each country’s most Gloria, they belonged in a different end of the spectrum with regards venerable “ historical monuments ” ( thus codifying and canonizing to scale, complexity, effort, inventiveness, “ ambition and execution. ” its past ), to secure casts for its own museums, and to establish proce­ They were however original designs and thus subjected to copyright. dures for the international exchange of desired objects. This fascinat­ They were copyrighted copies so to speak, a notion that points ing document, summing up a decade of similar initiatives from the to several delicious paradoxes in the phantasmagorical world of South Kensington Museum, implicitly theorizes plaster casts as a nineteenth­century architectural plaster. true architectural mass medium, as well as envisioning a museum The following chapter cuts into the trajectory of the four Norwe­ without walls based on reproductions whose merits and characteris­ gian stave­church portals that found their way into European and tics could be assessed across time and space. An imaginary museum American cast collections. Curated into collections that were from obtainable “ at a moderate cost ” and without causing the slightest their moment of conception accused of being hastily arranged damage to the originals, as Cole optimistically phrased it in the 1860s, “ ready­mades, ” or embedded into rigorous art­historical schemes, the was aptly demonstrated in Paris and referred to in the Convention: portals came to serve different interests: historical, aesthetical, peda­ “ The commencement of a system of reproducing works of art has gogical. These copies of fragments of mostly lost originals belong to been made by the South Kensington Museum, and illustrations of what has been described as the discredited half of the doublet origi- it are now exhibited in the British Section of the Paris Exhibition, nality / repetition, “ the one that opposes the multiple to the singular, where may be seen specimens of French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, 6 the reproducible to the unique, the fraudulent to the authentic, the German, Swiss, Russian, Hindoo, Celtic, and English Art. ” 198 199 Mari Lending Traveling Portals 1 The Norwegian Cole’s will­to­circulation was an immediate success. Among the fi f­ 7 As noted in handwriting copy of Henry cole’s teen signatories were Prince Oscar of Sweden and Norway, the later in the Inventory of 1868, “ convention for bought for £10 each Promoting Universally King Oscar II, a patron of the arts and founder of one of the world’s ( “ All subsequent copies £6 Reproductions of Works fi rst open­air museums outside Christiania ( today’s Oslo ), where each ” ). Numbered ’68.-10 of Art for the benefi t and ’68.-11, their prove- of Museums of All in 1881 he installed a stave church ( Gol ), relocated from the valleys.