Following his death in Bath, and almost certainly within hours of it, a plaster death mask was taken off the face of Wood. This was a not uncommon practice where the deceased was famous. The death mask may have been made as a prelude to the intended making of a portrait bust that was never executed in his widow's lifetime. Following the death of his widow in 1766, the death mask (doubtless amongst her possessions) was then employed to enable a bust of John Wood to be carved, appropriately from wood. It was completed in 1767 and the reverse of the bust bears an inscription of that date, the name of Wood and Wood's age at death. 1767 marks the commencement by Wood's son, John Wood the younger, of work on the Royal Crescent. The bust might have been carved by a specialist wood carver from the nearby commercial seaport of Bristol where ships' figureheads would regularly have been carved, often from softwoods such as pine. The bust, in a private collection, records the features of the architect at his death, and is the only known bust portrait of the famous architect, and is one of only two portraits of him. The whereabouts of the face mask from which the bust is derived are not known and, presumably, the mask has not survived.