This is the first stage of a new sculpture I’m working on that is inspired by the Voynich Manuscript’s “pools”. It is made of hand-sculpted porcelain and it’s designed similarly to another “pool” sculpture I made before:

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When making this first “prototype pool” sculpture, I had not yet figured out a reliable technique for sculpting these figures in porcelain, so I experimented with making the figure out of polymer clay. Since then I developed a new improved technique over the past year, to make these miniature figures using porcelain. I now prefer to use porcelain rather than polymer clay—the finished figure is more durable and it matches better with the rest of the sculpture, the pool structure, that is also made of porcelain. (Though for part of the figure-sculpting process I made re-usable molds for their faces out of polymer clay, the end result is entirely porcelain.) These are a number of the other ones I’ve made using the new technique, which I feel comes closer to capturing the Voynich Manuscript’s idiosyncratic style:

So, I’ll be using the same method I used to make these figures, to make more figures for the new pool. I also wanted to make this pool larger, with multiple figures in it. Similarly to the last pool, I’ll be using green-tinted resin for the “water”, which is a technique I’d like to continue to use for these pools. I’m also interested in how the resin interacts with light, which may be something I’ll experiment with. Right now, the pool in progress is still unfired porcelain, which has to dry for a while before it can be fired. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to sculpting some more of these big-headed weirdos…

New Porcelain Pools