While the benefits of using 3D printing to aid in the development of modern day products have been told loud and clear, one of the less talked about - albeit probably more exciting - uses of the technology has been in replicating products that were made hundreds or thousands of years ago in their near-exact form.
Previously, we’ve seen this method of 3D scanning various historical artifacts and archiving them with the possibility of 3D printing being used by museums and other historical archive institutions. Now, an artist from Canada is using a similar method to recreate a collection of tanning tools that were previously made by her ancestors.
The artist, Tania Larsson, is currently a student at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe and recently completed an internship at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian where she learned how to use modern 3D technologies to recreate objects in the museum’s collection.
The process, which involves the use of laser scanning and photogrammetry techniques to create accurate digital 3D models, was used to recreate everything from tanning tools to fishing spears. After the 3D models were made and optimized, they were then 3D printed out of sandstone and used as reference models to build identical tools using the traditional materials used in the original designs including bone and antler.
For Larsson - who grew up in France but later returned to her native Canada to reconnect with her culture - the act of recreating the tools was more than just a way of putting modern technologies to good use - it was a way for her to reconnect with her ancestors in ways that previously might not have been available. The 25-year-old’s, home in Yellowknife is in Canada’s Northwest Territories, where her native Gwich’in ancestors have lived for centuries as North America’s northernmost Athabaskan group.
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