If you had the chance to visit us during our Research Center open house in June, you may have come across a familiar sight in our collection—a Venus figure much like the one currently seen in the Haller Fountain at the bottom of the Taylor Street stairs in downtown Port Townsend. Did you know that the current statue is a replica of the original?
Known as Galatea since the original was dedicated in 1906, the current statue was installed in 1993. Since that time, the original has been in our collection and used to create three reproductions. The third and most recent is bound for San Diego’s Hotel del Coronado, which had a bronze Venus of its own until 1909, when it mysteriously vanished.
If you’re wondering what the process of reproducing a historic sculpture looks like, you’re in luck! While Mark Twain Stevenson and Sara Ybarra Lopez of Carapace Arts worked to create a mold of the Galatea in our collection, we recorded every minute of the 23-day process and we’re delighted to share a one-minute time-lapse video of it.
What are you seeing in the video? The Carapace Arts duo are creating a mold that will then be used to cast a new bronze sculpture for the Hotel Del Coronado’s gardens. The new Galatea is expected to be delivered in spring of 2024 and is part of a larger effort to restore aspects of the hotel’s original design that have been altered over the years.
The molds from this latest reproduction will be housed in our collection, where they may be used to support similar historic restoration projects in the future.
Some Galatea Lore
One of the pieces of lore around Galatea that we hear repeated the most is that in the 1950s, Dr. Kennith Carter paid to have her breasts augmented during one of her many repairs (between vandalism, climbing children, and an infamous collision with a vehicle, she had a rock and roll lifestyle and was damaged many times).
While we cannot verify this claim, the mold-making process did reveal a different augmentation: her left index finger! The mold rubber pulled off a small amount of paint that had been used to disguise a repair long-past, revealing an orange finger made of resin.
If you look closely at the statue downtown, you’ll also see that her left index finger is a little larger than the rest!
Historic image from JCHS collection: Haller Fountain before the Pontius Haller building was torn down. (ID 2005.77.59)
To learn more about this 2023 reproduction of Galatea, check out the story about the process in this Port Townsend Leader story from May.