Copenhagen Mermaid Statue Anecdote

[Dolphin Man]

Immediately after borrowing an interesting titled book, "It's the Disney Version", I jumped straight to the chapter about the Little Mermaid. This surprised me. According to the author and Wikipedia, the famous Danish statue is a copy of what Edvard Ericsen once sculpted in 1913.

Since 1961, it's been painted several times and had parts sawn off. "The Little Mermaid (statue)" on Wikipedia says the original parts, though replaced on the Copenhagen harbor, are being kept by the sculptor's heirs. The article references Der Spiegel as saying the replica is an exact match.

Reading further, I learned just how nationalistic the statue has been regarded. Thank goodness the original has been preserved. Are there photos of it from earlier in the century?

[mersheep]

There used to be a copy in San Francisco bay near Sausalito.

I seem to recall that it was used to fix the one in Copenhagen after the head was vandalized.

With San Francisco's boom bust economy, there are a lot of Bronzes about. Especially Rodin. Two wealthy women Mrs Stanford and Mrs. Sprekels (heiress of the sugar company that gave us the kingdom of Hawaii as a state.) Competed for who had the most/best examples. With bronzes, it is hard to say what is the original and what is the copy as the clay or wax master is usually destroyed in the casting process. Then it becomes about which production number was pulled at what time from the mold at what time. San Francisco is said to have the better examples as the castings were supervised by the sculpture himself, like the Thinker from the gates of hell, sits in the courtyard of the Palace of the Legion of Honor. Stanford on the other hand has a complete gates of Hell in the Rodin garden. The patterns and molds sill exist, and can be commissioned if one has enough $$$ so a lot of the Sanford collection is of more recent casting.

It is quite possible that one of these society ladies patronized Edvard Ericsen too. Mermaid bronzes are popular here in the SF bay area and Silicon valley. Such sculptures are a theme a friend of mine, Arlin Robbins, from the ren Faire sold and is known for. This lead to one of the ale stands being called the mermaid, and the popularity of mermaids at faires.

I did a quick cursory search of the San Francisco version but all that came up was the one in Copenhagen. I think the GG bridge is the most photographed man made object in the world, and the Copenhagen Statue up there (Although I suspect Venus de milo, and David are a bit higher in photo reproduction numbers.)

Making a copy is not too difficult. Latex or silicone rubber is used with a thickening agent. Then a new pattern is created compensating for metal expansion/shrinkage For some items the molds were cast in iron from the patterns, then it becomes a factory production process to make copies. These then get sold to tourist.

It is also possible to use photographs. Especially ones taken from multiple angles to create a models from. This process is called photogrameritry and pre dates what we think of as photography. Possibly several thousand years back to Greek and roman times. People love decorating their parks, gardens and libraries with statues. Most which we known from antiquity are copies of even older statues. The Venus de milo was found in a lime kiln as it was being used to make cement. It had been in a Gymnasium (elementary or grade school) and is probably a copy of a statue that was created 100s of years before in Turkey when the Greeks occupied turkey in their golden age.

Photogrammetry works my tracing a grid over the image (which can be made with a camera obscura or pinhole camera.) Then one finds the vanishing points of perspective and can mark the points on the grid. There are people who as specifically gifted at doing this. Some can even make a copy by looking at the object. Michelangelo and others used such people to do the grunt work for which they took credit. Even to this day there is a large economic divide between art and craft. The latter seen as low skilled labor. People and cultures what make "monkey" copies.

Nowadays making copies can be done with computers. It also works on old painting and drawings to re create things like buildings and other items where only images exist. This was done to rebuild the City of Dresden and other important buildings after WWII. Only a suite of paintings of the city skyline from the 18th century existed between 1945 and 1989. It will probably take another generation to restore it to a more definitive state with all the interior decorations and lived in feel.

The true location of Shakespeare's globe theater was found this way using Elisabethan drawings taken from the top of Southwark cathedral tower which still exists. As the pinhole camera obscura inverts the image. The engraver reversed some of the labels, so the location of the globe and the bear bating arena got swapped. Sam Wanamaker built the Globe replica in the wrong place. When the foundations of the Rose were found this gave another data point and the Globe foundations were located under a carpark and the Southwark bridge foundations. I have a book on this. Turns out the sixteenth century drawing is accurate to 3 percent of where things actually are in what looks like a crude drawing of London.

So the little mermaid statue one sees now and the statue from 1913 are probably indistinguishable from one another. Especially given how many photos exist and have been taken over the last 100+ years in many lighting conditions from many angles. One can even go to an Adobe website upload photos of an object. Adobe will then use the cloud to compute a 3 dimensional model which can then be 3D printed. So one could make their own personal copy if desired.

(Note the Adobe SW is being used to preserve stuff being destroyed by people in parts of the world, Like Palmyra. While it is not the same, the images can show details down to the surface cracks in the stone.)

Then there was George Washington's Axe (the one he used to chop down the cherry tree.) He got it from Ben Franklin so it is sometimes called Franklin's axe. By the time Abe Lincoln got it the handle had been replaced three times and the axe head replaced twice. Even so it is still the same axe that Franklin used.