owl
hieroglyphic pop-up card
Inspired
by a page in Robert Sabuda's Chronicles
of Narnia. This interpretation shifts from the
Narnia owl to a hieroglyphic owl. In Egyptian
hieroglyphics, the owl means a lot of things, which is why
you
see it so much, but chief among its meanings is the consonsonant sound
"m." |
I didn't begin
soon enough and ran out of
time with this card so I rushed the finish. I made
compromises for the sake of getting it into the mail that I otherwise
would not have made. Once the wings were attached, the
mechanism did not fit inside the outer dimensions of the card which was
already established.
The wings that did fit were too stubby. Ordinarily
I would have started over with a smaller mechanism
so that I could have the desired wingspan and the predetermined outer
dimensions. Instead, I cut the height of the supports twice
to try to get it to fit. When that failed, I cut the entire
background out in parts and glued them onto a new
background with
the dimensions that fit the mechanism and with a wingspan I could live
with, I also rearranged the hieroglyphic
message for the new background. I also compromised with the complexity
of the wing
mechanism. Sabuda uses a more complex mechanism to fold the
two portions of each wing. I eliminated that folding arrangement and
attached the two portions (four total) to the bottom of
the bird and to the back of the support. My wings fold
differently than Sabuda's wings, and the two portions of each
pair are not
connected, so the bird appears to have four wings. That's OK. I know of
Egyptian geese depicted with three wings, two flying and one folded.
Due to time constraint, I also decided to make an envelope that fit
the card instead of a mummiform wrapping which is what I intended. Also
I decided on not making an elaborate fresco cover for the card that
would have
taken a few
more days -- plaster drying, watercolor painting, staining,
matt cutting, binding, etc. -- instead I drew the owl hieroglyph on
heavy Bristol paper and treated it as a painting. I don't feel so bad
about this,
after all, this is exactly the sort of thing the
Egyptians themselves
would have done when pressed for time or short of funds or working
within
constrained
space. You might be surprised at the shortcuts Egyptians took
continuously, in addition to their deeply held philosophy on not
finishing anything completely. And not just abbreviating standard
compositions on the walls
either, they even smashed dead pharaohs into their caskets,
breaking bones and bashing their noses in order to force fit them
inside when the dimensions weren't quite exactly right. And
that's just wrong!
The
message related in hieroglyphics inside the card is a simple birthday
message that includes the name of the recipient and the date.
I
also included a translation separately with a brief explanation of my
choice of spelling and arrangement for the name.
Oddly, I
can find no word for party or for celebration. I know
Egyptians
had a lot of banquets because there are so many paintings of them, but
there's a big difference between banquet and a simple birthday
celebration. I substituted the word for "festival," although
a
birthday celebration is not quite a festival either, one must make
allowances and it does convey the idea. |
This is the finished head and body ↓
Body attached to posts before they were cut. The original
background. ↓
Support for the head. In Sabuda's version, the head is attached to the
post
that runs through the body and is folded with an origami type crimp.
My version adds another post that runs through the body so that the
support becomes a table, but one that never opens completely flat.↓
Before the posts were cut and the before the wings were attached and
then abandoned.
The wings were trimmed to become braces for new longer wings.
The hieroglyphics
were cut out and re-glued onto a new background. ↓
After these
photos were taken, the two sections of each wing were connected with
another portion of wing, which amounted to a third intervening wing, a
hinge wing, if you like. So now each wing is constructed of
three long segments with shorter connecting tabs that switch in
orientation from horizontally flat with the bird's body to vertically
attached to the post. I'm quite satisfied with the
arrangement as the three pieces now look more like a single wing on
each side, but without a complex hinge, which I still don't
understand, that folds the wings back. |