Gueules cassées (broken faces) is a French expression for facially disfigured servicemen that originated in World War I. In a time before transplants, the task of repairing these broken faces was largely left to masks. The person who made the best masks was a sculptor named Anna Coleman Ladd. Along with Francis Derwent Wood, an artist and captain working in London hospitals, Ladd is credited with helping hundreds of maimed veterans re-adjust to society. In her Studio for Portrait Masks in Paris, Ladd would take plaster casts of a soldier's face in an attempt to re-create an identical cheekbone or eye-socket on the opposite side. Ladd then crafted a full or partial mask out of copper, which she painted to match the skin while the soldier was wearing it. The entire piece, weighing roughly half a pound, was either tied to the head with strings or hung from a set of eyeglasses.