I'm currently reading material on the Stamp Act. Every time they mention the word effigy I wonder what it would have been made of, looked like, and how you could identify that particular effigy as the intended target and not someone completely different. It doesn't have to be about the American Revolution. I am just as interested in how any other culture would have created an effigy as well.
I can tell you first-hand about one particular effigy, peculiar to Britain: Guy Fawkes. We're Americanised now, but the normal thing used to be to make an effigy of him, called a Guy, to burn on the bonfire. You would display your Guy and ask for a 'penny for the Guy', then burn him on Bonfire Night (5th November).
Guy Fawkes was made of any old clothes you had - a jumper and a pair of trousers - and stuffed with paper, dried grass, sticks and tbh mostly screwed up paper. The face was done with paper, with his signature moustache and beard drawn or painted on, though if you were posh you might actually buy a Guy Fawkes mask and if you were really artistic you might make one out of papier maché, but generally people just painted on a paper cut-out tied on with string. The point was, after all, to burn the thing.
You knew it was Guy Fawkes because of the beard and moustache. In other words, a clear visual symbol to label the effigy. Not all Guys were actually Guy Fawkes either. If you were burning a Guy in a skirt suit, wig, handbag, fake pearls and a pointy big nose during the miners strikes, everyone knew it was a Margaret Thatcher effigy. Again, some would have plastic masks tied on.
Guys have died out, at least in this part of England, replaced by Trick or Treat at some point during the 1990s and thus just scraping in under the twenty year rule. Lewes still burn an effigy, but that's more pomp and circumstance than something put together out of scraps.