Apr 27, 20225 min read

Laser Cutting & Engraving

18 Feb - 30 March.

Prior to using paper, many different substitutes were used in different parts of the world. Growing up, one of these substitutes that I saw in my history classes and museums were manuscripts made of Birch Bark. Bamboo manuscripts were also casually portrayed in children's TV shows and other popular media.

18 Feb - 3 March.

Birch Bark Manuscript

Birch bark manuscripts are documents written on pieces of birch bark's inner layer, which was commonly used for writing before the mass production of paper. Birch bark has been used for writing for many centuries and in many cultures.

The oldest dated birch bark manuscripts are a number of Gandharan Buddhist texts from the first century CE, which are thought to have been created in Afghanistan, most likely by the Dharmaguptaka sect. Translations of the texts, mostly in Kharoh, have resulted in the earliest known versions of important Buddhist scriptures, including a Dhammapada, Buddha's discourses that include the Rhinoceros Sutra, Avadanas, and Abhidharma texts.

Gandhara birchbark scroll fragments (c. 1st century)

Manuscripts written on birch bark in Sanskrit with Brahmi script have been dated to the first few centuries CE. Birch bark was used for manuscripts by several early Sanskrit writers, including Klidsa, Sushruta, and Varhamihira. Himalayan Birch bark is still used to write sacred mantras in India and Nepal today.

After doing some reading I found that birch bark was also extensively used in Russia and even has some connections to the Irish language Ogham. Russian texts discovered in Veliky Novgorod have been dated between the 9th and 15th centuries CE. The majority of those documents are letters written in the Old Novgorod dialect by various people.

Birch Bark Letters - Novgorod - Russian XI-XV centuries

The native writing system of the Irish language, Ogham, also known as the "tree alphabet," was allegorically invented by Ogma, who wrote a proscription on birch to Lugh, warning him; the text of this proscription can be found in the Book of Ballymote. Ogham's first letter is beith, which means "birch."

Bamboo Manuscripts

Prior to the widespread introduction of paper in the first two centuries AD, the primary medium for writing documents in China was bamboo and wooden slips. (Silk was used on occasion, such as in the Chu Silk Manuscript, but it was incredibly expensive for most documents.)

The earliest surviving examples of wood or bamboo slips date from the Warring States period in the 5th century BC. However, references in earlier texts preserved on other media show that some precursor to these Warring States period bamboo slips were in use as early as the late Shang period (from about 1250 BC). During the Han dynasty, bamboo or wooden strips were the standard writing material, and excavated examples abound.

Following that, Cai Lun's invention of paper during the Han dynasty began to displace bamboo and wooden strips from mainstream use, and by the 4th century AD, bamboo had been largely abandoned as a medium for writing in China.

Each of the long, narrow strips of wood or bamboo carries a single column of brush-written text, with space for several tens of visually complex ancient Chinese characters. Each strip of wood or bamboo is said to be the length of a chopstick and two inches wide. For longer texts, many slips were sewn together with hemp, silk, or leather to create a folding book known as jiance or jiandu.

Sun Tzu, The Art of War. Special Collection, University of California Riverside.

The centuries-old practice of interring books made of durable bamboo strips in royal tombs has preserved many works in their original form. The discovery of a tomb of a Wei king by Jizhong in 279 AD was a significant early find, though the original recovered strips have since vanished. Several significant caches have been discovered in recent years.

Laser Cutting and Engraving

3 - 12 March.

Although that seemed like a segue, these two ways of creating written texts were very interesting to me. I want to try and use something from them in my project next semester. In order to be able to understand what I could create through laser cutting and engraving, I decided to make a few sample projects.

I made an appointment for laser cutting and engraving, but due to the long line of bookings and how busy the workshops are, it took a while for me to get a spot available. Learning how to work with the laser cutting software was also interesting. Even though I had looked at tutorials I still spent a long time reworking my files and fine-tuning them for the desired results. As I was there to learn how to use the machine and the software I didn't have a particular goal or form in mind, rather I wanted to try different settings and materials so I could understand how it worked. I used some birch wood, plywood, chart board, foam board and paper as my materials. I also used projects which required engraving, and cutting and projects that required both to see how it would work.

First I tried engraving, and I only got an outline on the first board. As I also wanted to learn how to get it completely engraved I tried more pieces of wood with the same words in Arabic. The line I am using for this project is a quote from the Quran. I wanted to use a lyrical and connected script to see how the engraving would work, thus I used Arabic.

After that I tried to cut a project however because I had not formatted the order in which things would be cut and engraved, it did not end up working out. I spent a while reordering everything and tried it again, and it worked this time. After this I finally had gotten a hang of things so I decided to cut and engrave three projects together, however, because of the way my AI file has been created, some lines had been repeated. Because of this, the laser cutter kept going over the same lines even after they had been cut or engraved. The ones that were engraved over ended up just cutting through as the chart board was not thick enough.

12 - 30 March.

I built the projects I had laser cut and engraved. I also finished the first plack I had engraved. I stained it a dark mahogany wood and then buffed it using white spirit beeswax. Because of the way the engraving was done I had to govern over the grooves with a pin to get the excess wax out of it.