Original death mask of James Joyce by Paul Speck 1941

On the day Joyce died in Zurich, 13 January 1941 Joyce’s friend, art historian Carola Giedion-Welcker commissioned local artist Paul Speck to produce two plaster negatives of Joyce’s visage. Both original plaster masks were presented by Speck to Giedion-Welcker who retained the pair until the late 1950s. A third plaster mask by Speck, however, was made contemporaneously. Of these three, one is in the James Joyce Tower, one is at the James Joyce Foundation in Zurich; and the third is in the US Library of Congress.