Marc Sokpolie

I love visiting the old cities of Europe, with a church or castle at the core, old streets like in Tours, france, museums like the Uffizi in Florence, the Grand palace in Paris. Give me the artisans, the stonemasonry, the pillars, the corbels and cartouches. I am especially fascinated with the Acanthus leaf. Imagine a greek sculptor in the 5th century b.c.:

Callimachus, who invented this ornament, is said to have had the idea suggested to him by the following incident: A Corinthian maiden who was betrothed, fell ill, and died just before the appointed time of her marriage. Her faithful and grieving nurse placed on her tomb a basket containing many of her toys and jewels, and covered it with a flat tile. It so happened that the basket was placed immediately over an acanthus root, which afterward grew up around the basket and curled under the weighty resistance of the tile, thus exhibiting a form of foliage which was, on its being seen by the architect, adopted as a model for the capital of a new order; so that the story of affection was perpetuated in marble. https://www.universalfreemasonry.org/en/encyclopedia/acanthus

If you notice one of them, you’ll see them everywhere. As with all special shapes, they’ll take over a part of my mind, and the only way to break away from this spell is to study the shape and make it myself. So I started making pencil sketches to learn the shape, and then got to 3D modeling and printing the file.

The hard part is the overlap of the leaves. Second attempt was much better:

Then I started making a Corbel, sort of a balcony support with a curly shape. Took a while to get the curl right, tried to implement the golden ratio, and added rosettes. Finally I slapped my second acanthus leaf on it- and it started to gain some traction.

This is a small test print, about 20 cms tall. I am dreaming of printing a really big one, and mounting it on someone’s house. Might have to call my friend Alex In Haarlem, a gilding expert

Detail of the corbel. Bit of a misprint as I didn’t add any supports, but still nice.