Hi.

What would life be without a little toast?

This beautiful silver rhyton came into my knowledge on during an art viewing session (shoutouts to conservators at Straus Center, for wand-waving and restoring life to art objects on daily basis). Only that it came fragmented and detached from the vessel part of it.

Rhyton is this *beautiful* drink vessel, that Persians and Greeks used at feasts. What is interesting about rhyton, as compared to a good ol' mug, is it has openings on both ends - rhyton was not designed to hold liquid, but for the host (or slaves sometimes) to perform a ritual, distributing liquid from a larger krater to cups. Etymologically, rhyton means "flux" or "fluctuation". Materially, the totality of rhyton is battered into its ornamentally detailed shape from one piece of silver.

Naturally, to restore the deformed deer head to its liquid delivering purpose is of much delight. Sadly by then, I was not equipped with the wonderful knowledge of spaying corn flour over the antiquity to get a perfect 3d scan - so I decided to aim for the second best, a rhyton of my own craft (almost).

I chopped of the horsehead from a downloaded horse mesh, and extruded the end to an imperfect curvature - to mimic the effect of manual labor. I had to repose the horse from a galloping state to a reclined one - for such are the limitations of 3d printing skills compared to 2000-year-old silver craftsmanship.

I perforated the nostrils, to keep the design authentic - which of course translates to a huge mess for trying to make solids out of unenclosed surfaces.

Before I hit print, I consulted Leo for his fine advisory. Leo recognized it as a "printing struggle" and encouraged me to "print away just to see how it turns out". As Leo or anyone who has 3d printing experience had foreseen - it turned out a beautiful mess.

The repair now demands a repair.

//The lessons are as follows: 1.3d printing is more forgiving to thin walls structures as I expected. Here I offset for 1 millimeter and the largely hollow vessel holds up. 2. Even a tiny horizontal linkage can prepare for a vertical piling. 3. Everything needs to touch something right beneath.