Twee reliëfs met griffioenen, gebeeldhouwd door Jean Herman before 1880

These two reliefs with griffins were sculpted by Jean Herman, probably in the early 20th century. The material is plaster, worked in a shallow relief. Given the crisp detail, it’s likely Herman used a mold – a technique that allows for multiples to be made relatively quickly, scaling up production in a way that would have been impossible for earlier generations of sculptors. We can imagine plaster workshops in the 19th and early 20th centuries, busy with skilled artisans who could create relatively inexpensive decorations for buildings and homes. This would have democratized access to the fine arts, allowing the growing middle class to acquire objects that would once have been available only to the wealthy elite. And though these griffins might seem like relatively humble works of decorative art, keep in mind that skilled craftsmanship, even when industrially applied, is always a worthy focus of our attention.