PRIMARY SOURCES

ON COPYRIGHT

(1450-1900)

Petition by citizen makers of plaster casts to the National Convention, 3rd March (1794)

Source: Archives nationales, Paris (F17/1304)

Citation:
Petition by citizen makers of plaster casts to the National Convention, 3rd March (1794), Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org

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Translation

 

3rd March, 1794

 

Petition by citizen makers of casts to the National court

 

Citizen representatives,

 

The law of 19th July, which guarantees the property of authors of texts, composers of music, painters and sculptors, omits sculptors and makers of plaster casts.  It is for the reparation of this omission that we come to beg your assistance.

 

Plaster-casting is to sculpture what the art of typography is to literature.  It is the cast that multiplies the work of the chisel.  The art of making plaster casts requires neither the gifts of genius nor the talent of imitation, nor the study of nature.  Only mechanical methods are used by makers of casts to reproduce impressions of sculpture of all kinds.  But these methods are difficult and require protracted experience.  Casting a figure also requires fairly considerable advances of time, care and money.

 

And yet no sooner has the maker of casts offered the public plaster copies of a statue, for which the right to cast has been ceded to him by the sculptor, than a race of hornets seizes his property.  We are speaking here of those copiers of casts, veritable pirates, hardened to surviving on prey and plunder.  They appropriate one of these copies from which they take what is called an after- or counter-cast.  In no time they flood the capital and the provinces with deformed and counterfeit knock offs, degrading works of art by these fakes, and undermine the business of real plaster-casters by selling at cut price.

 

The plaster-casters have complained about this violation of their property for a long time; in claiming their rights they have the advantage of pleading also the sculptors’ cause.

 

The sculptor does not always have occasion to develop his ideas in marble or in bronze.  Less beautiful and less enduring, plaster offers him a cheap means of communicating them to the public, of marketizing them, and of reproducing them through multiplication.  If, as is often the case, the sculptor advances money for castings, he has an interest, like the casters, in quelling the abuse that we are denouncing.

 

He might, perhaps, console himself for the losses occasioned by this robbery, were his honour not also endangered by the incompetence of these ignoramuses who, not content with trafficking their piracies with impunity, seem to make a point of dishonouring the fruits of their greed.  Masterpieces, those even of antiquity, monuments that encode the proportions of nature and the principles of beauty, are travestied, mutilated, violated, and maimed in all possible ways by their grasping and brutal hands, and represent after a certain time, no more than phony translations fit merely to misdirect the young student, and unrecognisable even, to the master of art.

 

 



    


Transcription

 

Le treize Ventose de l’an 2e

 

Petition des Citoyens Mouleurs à la Cour nationale

 

Citoyens représentans,

 

La loi du 19 Juillet qui garantit la propriété des auteurs d’écrits, Compositeurs de Musique, Peintres et dessinateurs a omis les Sculpteurs et les Mouleurs.  C’est cette omission que nous venons vous prier de réparer.

 

Le moulage est à la Sculpture ce que l’art typographique est à la literature. C’est lui qui multiplie les productions du cyseau. L’art du moulleur n’exige ni les dons du genie, ni les talent de l’imitations, ni l’étude de la Nature. Ce n’est que par des procédés Méchaniques qu’il parvient à reproduire les empreintes de tout les genres de Sculpture.  Mais ce Méchanisme est difficile et demande une longue experience.  Le Moulage d’une figure exige aussi des avances de tems, de soins et d’argent assée considérables.

 

Cependant a peine un Mouleur a-t-il mis au jour quelques exemplaires de la figure dont le sculpteur lui aura cede le droit de Moulage qu’une race de frelons s’empare de sa propriétés.  Nous parlons de ces surmouleur, veritables corsair habitués à vivre de proye et de butin.  Ils se saisissent d’un de ces exemplaires sur le quel ils font ce qu’on appelle un surmoullés.  Bientot ils inondent la Capitale et les Départemens d’emprintes difformes et contrfaites, dégradent par ces contrefaçons les ouvrages de l’art, et par le rabais auquel ils vendent, décourage les entreprises des veritable mouleur.

 

Depuis longtems les Mouleur gémissent de cette violation de propriété, mais en réclamant leurs droits ils ont aussi l’avantage de plaider la cause des Sculpteurs.

 

Le Statuaire n’a pas toujours l’occasion de developer ses pensées en marbre ou en bronze. Le plâtre matière moins belle et moins durable lui presente le moyent économique de les communiquer au public, d’en trafiquer et de les reproduire en les multipliant. Si le Statuaire comme il arrive souvent fait les avances du moulage, il est intéressé de meme que les Mouleurs a la repression de l’abus que nous vous dénoncons.

 

Peut etre se consoleroit-il des pertes que le brigandage lui fait éprouvés si son honneur ne se trouvoit encore compromis par l’inhabilités de ces ignorans qui, non content d’exercer impunément leur trafic de piraterie, semblent prendre à tâche de déshonorer les fruits de leur rapacité.  Sous leurs mains avides et barbares les chefs d’œuvres même de l’antiquité, ces monuments devenus le code des proportions de la natures et des principes du Beau, travestis, mutilé, violés, estropiés de toutes manieres possible en presentent plus au bout de quelque tems que des traductions mensongères propres a égarer le jeune étudiant et meconnaissables même aux Maîtres de l’art.

 



    


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