This sculpture in my Voynich Manuscript series, is inspired by folio f53v. While this is an earlier sculpture, I only recently took some new video (below) and collected some photos of the process that I had not posted before.

There is no video of any of the making process, since I started doing that only with more recent pieces, but I did take lots of photos at the time at different stages of the process- here is a look into how this sculpture came together.

Some early drawings of the structure I planned to make in porcelain (it’s a mystery why I drew it on the lid of a plastic storage box, but apparently I then found some suitable paper…)

Constructing the porcelain shapes:

The porcelain sections and leaves after the first kiln firing (bisque firing), and trying out the arrangement before they are attached together:

Similar to my “Cracks in the Code” piece, I planned for this sculpture to have the corresponding Voynich Manuscript text carved through the porcelain, with light shining through from inside the sculpture. This was the second sculpture I made with this technique, but this time I made the carved glyphs much larger. It was comparatively easier than the first time, but still extremely time consuming to carve through porcelain with a handheld Dremel rotary tool and diamond-coated drill bit! I did these carvings with the porcelain submerged in water since it would otherwise generate a lot of dust.

Most of the porcelain was left unglazed for a more matte finish, but I did glaze the flowers and the plant roots. I also used metal gilding for the leaves. After the final kiln firing, I connected the different sections by permanently bonding them together with a high strength epoxy paste. This is an alternative to constructing the entire sculpture as one connected piece of porcelain from the beginning. This way made it easier to work on each piece separately. Constructing a sculpture this way also opens up more possibilities for the design when it is not limited to structures that must be supported together in the kiln.