A New Nose for the Old Man

A bust of John Brown was buried in storage somewhere at Tufts University

TRANSCRIPT

“The bust of John Brown—not just ours, but its history—I needed to do everything I could to be able to get this important object conserved and on view.”

In the late 1940s, the bust suffered a fall and had lost his nose and part of his eyebrow. And there was the rust stain on his chest from likely being pushed up against the water pipe for many years. And somebody had drawn eyeballs on him in blue ballpoint ink.

Conservation begins

Sculpture conservator Rika Smith McNally undertook the cleaning. She tried out various mixtures and cleaning recipes and found one that works the best, and delivered the bust back to a tough, bright white and looking beautiful.

And so at that point we decided to restore the nose and the eyebrows, and thought that the best way to do that would be to utilize 3D scanning—which is kind of an exciting way.

Scanning and reconstruction

So we borrowed a plaster copy of the bust held at the Boston Athenaeum. Sean O’Reilly from 3D Printsmith came and did a scan of the negative area of our bust where the nose should be, and he did a scan of the nose on the bust from the Boston Athenaeum. He was able to make those two scans join into one 3D model of the nose that would fit our bust. Sean was able to print that in blue plastic.

From that, Bob Shore of the Skylight Studios made a mold that could be cast with a plastic that simulates marble.

It’s a wonderful sculpture, and it captures this man — but it’s also telling the story of something that happened here on this campus. The bust of John Brown belongs here. This is tough history.

the background history of the John Brown bust

Originating from a relationship with George Sterns, one of Brown’s primary financial backers, the John Brown bust was carved by Edward Augustus Brackett, who sketched Brown in his Charlestown, VA jail cell before Brown was hanged for being on the right side of history. This video features Laura McDonald, the Collections Manager and Registrar at Tufts University giving the history of the bust and how Tufts came to be it’s home.

TRANSCRIPT:

It was important to me to tell the story of John Brown and George Stearns, and this relationship that influenced so many people — and that it all happened here. It happened right down the road. It happened where the gym is.

George Stearns was a resident here of Medford. His home was called the Evergreens, and it was right on the other side of College Avenue. He was a businessman who was devoted to the abolitionist cause. He was Universalist and had a moral problem with slavery, and when the Fugitive Slave Act was passed, he harbored runaway slaves at the Evergreens. We walk by the little rock that says "Here stood a stop on the Underground Railroad."

A devoted abolitionist

He became increasingly vocal about his thoughts about slavery as the years progressed, and he became involved with a group of men who were banding together. They called themselves the Secret Six, and they were supporting John Brown's ideas for what eventually became the raid on Harpers Ferry.

John Brown began to make fairly regular trips to Medford, to the Evergreens. He knew that he could come and talk to not only George Stearns but also George Stearns's wife, Mary, about the money that was going to be needed to fund his plans.

A supportive but strained relationship

I feel like the relationship between the two men was both supportive and strained. John Brown was certainly a dynamic personality — he was able to rally support for these activities that some people did not have the stomach for.

Although George Stearns was devoted to the same cause that John Brown was devoted to, George Stearns was very much a behind-the-scenes kind of man. When John Brown made the raid on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, George Stearns took a train to Montreal at the advice of his lawyer and tried to distance himself from John Brown at that time.

Stearns eventually came back from Canada. He was called to the Senate to answer for his part in the raid.

A couple of years later, as the Civil War continued to progress, he was tapped by the governor of Massachusetts to muster the 54th and 55th regiments of African American soldiers — a job that he undertook with a lot of pride and excitement.

Tufts enters the story

At about the time that all of this was happening, Tufts College was in its earliest days. Being Universalist, George and Mary Stearns were interested in the college and decided to leave their estate to Tufts.

Mary Stearns also commissioned a bust of her husband by Samuel Morse. That bust and the bust of John Brown were both for a time on view at the Evergreens.

When Mary Stearns died in 1902, Tufts College took ownership of the Evergreens estate and some of the contents of the house, including the bust of John Brown and the bust of George Stearns.

It's interesting to think that the two busts were languishing in storage, strapped to the same pallet, for almost 50 years. So even though they had this awkward relationship in life, they were bound together — and not only through history. The busts of them have been bound together in the same way.