What is this thing? Just like the meaning of the rest of the manuscript, this remains an open question, though there has been much speculation and discussion among Voynich researchers. On the voynich.ninja research forum the object (and another similar one that appears on another folio) is often just referred to as “The Thing”, for lack of an official identification.

For my sculpture, I am not trying to propose an answer to the question of “what is it”, or to present it in such a way that it will be clearly identifiable as something we recognize. Rather my goal in sculpting it was to preserve its ambiguity and mystery, in keeping with the original drawing, while making it three-dimensional.

This was a challenge both in designing the way it would look, and also in designing a way to support it so that the miniature hand of the porcelain nymph could hold the object. Since the weight of the object can’t easily be supported just by the miniature fingers, I designed the arm of the figure with a long support wire that runs through the inside of the arm and into the middle of the torso. The wire extends out of the hand so that it functions as part of the design while at the same time providing structural support.

I made the oblong shape of the object with flameworked glass, and the other parts with porcelain and gold luster.

With the porcelain, I made the “dots” and the scalloped part with pointed end. Similarly to how the dots run through the center of the object in the original drawing, the porcelain beads are made to thread onto the wire that the nymph holds.

Porcelain that is painted with gold luster needs to go through three separate kiln firings. The luster, which paints on red, turns to gold during the kiln firing:

The glass part needed to be made to a very specific shape, so I waited until I had made the porcelain parts, and then I made a sketch of the size that the glass needed to be. While doing the glassblowing, I was often stopping to check the dimensions and make sure that everything would fit with the rest of the sculpture:

In the next and final update on this sculpture, I will attach the figure to the “cloud” base using epoxy resin.

Just One Of Those Things.