Nick is a wearer of many hats. Harmonica player for the excellent Alabama 3, sculptor, former Royal Navy diver, son of Bruce Reynolds (mastermind of the great train robbery) but it's his extremely niche business that interests me, he's one of a handful of people in the world today still making death masks. He's done 60 to 100 death masks (numbers aren't his strong point) including film director Ken Russell, actor Peter O'Toole and Malcolm McClaren . He also makes 'life masks' having done around 200. His living "sitters" include singer Grace Jones, Mick Jones of the Clash and astronaut Buzz Aldrin.
In an interview with 'Please kill me' Nick explains the process - "Basically, I go to the morgue. I get the body out of the cooler, and I put a release agent over their face and hair – like Nivea. That’s so the molding material doesn’t stick to them or doesn’t stick to their hair. Once I’ve prepared them in that way and they’re moisturized, I mix up alginate: it’s a compound made out of seaweed that dentists use for taking impressions of teeth that has a consistency of, like, a floppy jelly. And I completely cover the head with that. And that dries in about two minutes. That is then reinforced with plaster bandage, which I’ve dipped in water. Like when you break an arm or a leg: the stuff that they put on you for the cast. I then use that on top of the alginate, and that holds the alginate’s shape. Then that comes off the subject and I’m then left with a negative – the mold of the person. And then into that, I will pour molten wax. And then, once that is cooled down, I then take off the mold, which is thrown away and I’m left with a wax replica of the person. Once I’ve got that wax, I then basically have to re-sculpt that to give the impression that they haven’t been dead for a week."
In Texas in 2007 Reynolds was involved in a protest against the death penalty in the US. John Joe "Ash" Amador, a 30-year-old American was executed for murder. Nick talked to Amador by phone just ten minutes or so before his execution.
Amador told him, "Having a death mask made was a real honor because it was normally reserved for kings and people like that. Now I am somebody." Reynolds made the death mask some 15 minutes after the execution, in a cabin in the woods near the prison. Amador's body was still warm and the skin came out in goose bumps as the mold was applied. Reynolds made a cast of Amador's head as well as the arm where he'd been given the lethal injection. Seven years later, the death mask was featured in a show, "Disobedient Objects," at London's Victoria & Albert Museum in 2014.
Reynolds became interested in sculpture in his 30’s, going on to create a name for himself as the UK’s foremost Death Mask artist. His family links to the criminal underworld saw him produce a number of life and death masks of some of Britain’s most notorious criminals for his 1999 exhibition “Cons to Icons”.
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