AppdArchaeology.com
A case study in the effectiveness and versatility of 3d Printing
Bringing the Whetstone to Lewis
The original Lewis whetstone could not be transported for display, so it was digitally scanned at National Museums Scotland and I was commissioned to produce physical replicas for a museum display on Lewis. This offered a simple example of one of the things I find most exciting about 3D printing: allowing an artefact to effectively be in more than one place at once.
I produced two versions of the whetstone, one at its original size and another enlarged to 200%. The larger print was an experiment in how changing the scale of an object might affect the way people experienced it, rather than simply reproducing the original as closely as possible.
Both replicas were incorporated into a tactile display where visitors were encouraged to pick them up, handle them and examine the surfaces for themselves.
Exploring Scale and Accessibility
The enlarged version proved particularly interesting. Older visitors found that subtle details on the surface, which could be difficult to see on the original-scale replica, became much easier to recognise when enlarged. For me, this demonstrated that a 3D print does not always need to be an exact substitute for the original object. Once an artefact exists as digital data, scale can become another interpretive tool. A replica can be enlarged, handled and placed in contexts where the original cannot, while the original object remains safely within its collection.
The project showed how relatively simple reproductions can make collections more accessible and give people a more direct, tactile way of engaging with archaeological material.
AppdArchaeology.com