HOW INVALUABLE ASSETS CREATE A VALUABLE BUSINESS-MADAME TUSSAUDS Marie Tussaud was born as Marie Grosholtz in 1760 in Strasbourg , France. Her mother worked as a housekeeper for Dr. Philippe Curtius in Bern, Switzerland, who was a physician skilled in wax modelling. Curtius taught Tussaud the art of wax modelling. Tussaud created her first wax sculpture , of Voltaire , in 1777.Other famous people she modelled at that time include Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Benjamin Franklin . During the French Revolution she modelled many prominent victims. In her memoirs she claims that she would search through corpses to find the severed heads of executed citizens, from which she would make death masks . Her death masks were held up as revolutionary flags and paraded through the streets of Paris. Following the doctors death in 1794, she inherited his vast collection of wax models and spent the next 33 years travelling around Europe. She married to Francois Tussaud in 1795 lent a new name to the show: Madame Tussauds. In 1802 she went to London, having accepted an invitation from Paul Philidor, a magic lantern and phantasmagoria pioneer, to exhibit her work alongside his show at the Lyceum Theatre, London . She did not fare particularly well financially, with Philidor taking half of her profits. As a result of the Napoleonic Wars , she was unable to return to France, so she traveled throughout Great Britain and Ireland exhibiting her collection. From 1831 she took a series of short leases on the upper floor of Baker Street Bazaar (on the west side of Baker Street , Dorset Street and King Street), which later featured in the Druce-Portland case sequence of trials of 1898–1907. This became Tussauds first permanent home in 1836.One of the main attractions of her museum was the Chamber of Horrors. Madame Tussauds indoor on Baker St By 1835 Marie had settled down in Baker Street , London, and opened a museum.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Nov 2014 06:47:17 +0000
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