When I first began making sculptures inspired by the imagery in the Voynich Manuscript, I did not have a clear idea of how I was going to three-dimensionally interpret the drawings of female figures, known as the “Voynich nymphs,” who occupy a significant portion of the manuscript’s pages. The uniqueness of these figures lies in the particular style they are drawn, as well as their perplexing engagement with their bizarre surroundings, their purpose unclear. Intriguing as the Voynich Manuscript would still be if the only illustrations to accompany its unreadable text were the unidentified plants and charts, the presence of the nymphs adds a human element that further draws one in to its mystery.

Lately I have been focusing on how to develop a sculpting style for the nymphs that adequately captures their unique features as they were originally drawn by the Voynich Manuscript’s artist. The current sculpture I am working on, which includes four specific figures from folio f73r, has been a lengthy process of experimentation, but it has led me to finally work out a method that I think will not only work well for these specific four, but will be a technique I want to repeat for future nymph-related sculptures in my series.

This is the second full-body Voynich nymph I have hand-sculpted in porcelain using this technique. In the video below, I show and explain some highlights of the process. (The resulting figure is not yet fired, and not yet combined with other parts of the final sculpture, but this video shows how I model the clay into its complete form.) It’s not a simple process by any means, but now that I have been practicing this method, perhaps the remaining nymphs in the group will manifest before too long!