Hand with Instrument Casts

The unique and evocative casts of ‘hands at work’ displayed here are not only stand-out pieces of art, but also demonstrate the correct use of instruments typically employed by plastic surgeons.

Cast in dental stone, the surgeon’s hands are presented almost “impossibly” incorporating genuine surgical instruments whilst at work. The pieces and images were produced at Whiston Hospital on Merseyside by Professor Rowan Pritchard-Jones, with the expertise of Consultant Prosthetist Jane McPhail, commencing in 2013. They were inspired by a trip Professor Jones made to The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore. Here, one of only a handful of medical art departments in the USA, uses hand casts to train young artists.

On his return to the UK, then Registrar, now Consultant and Honorary Clinical Professor in plastic surgery at the Universities of Liverpool and Edge Hill, Rowan Pritchard Jones worked with Jane McPhail to produce these sculptures. They demanded novel techniques of casting in dental stone resulting in exquisite skin details normally obscured in reality by surgical gloves. It is clear that the instruments are integral to the casting, not added afterwards, but their method of incorporation remains mysterious. 

The casts have been expertly photographed by Mr. John Heaton.