Recreating 17th Century Glassware From Delft

This is a teamproject (officially called 'Vindplaats Delft) I carried out during my study some years ago. The project was initiated by artist Maaike Roozenburg, who wanted to create replicas of 17th century glassware from the Boijmans van Beuningen museum, to enable people to use objects they would normally only see behind the glass in a museum.

The glasses (see images) were 3D scanned using a medical CT-scanner, then converted to step-files and then 3D printed. These 3D prints were used as a positive for a plaster mold which allowed us to create porcelain replicas. The weblog that was created during the project provides more elaborate information

Step 1: 3D Scanning the Glassware

The glasses were scanned using a medical CT scanner. This gave us over 1000 sections of the glass in a DICOM format.

Step 2: Converting and Modifying the DICOM Files to a 3D-printable File

The next step was to add all the slices as shown in the first image. The adding of the slices resulted in some gaps that needed to be filled using mesh repair software. This resulted in a rough STL-file shown in the second image. This cup clearly shows the layers of the scan. A compromise needed to be found between smoothening out the layer visibilty and keeping the interesting details of the cup. The final result is shown in the last image.

Step 3: 3D Printing the Cups

The cups were 3D-printed with different printing techniques and materials, to see what gave the best result.

Step 4: Creating the Molds

The 3D printed cups were used to create plaster molds for the porcelain casting. The mold was created using clay and wood as shown in the images above.

Step 5: Cast Porcelain Replicas

Finally, it was time to cast the porcelain replicas. The result is shown in the image above. The end result can be found on the artist's website.

Hope you enjoyed!