Essay On Dresden Codex

The object I have chosen to research is the Dresden Codex of the Maya people. The Dresden Codex is considered to be one of the four remaining authentic Maya codices. It is believed that it consists of observations and calculations of astronomical phenomena. It also contains calendrical data, sky mechanics, and tables of integers that are used fro calculations of planetary movements. The Dresden codex is one of the four books attributed to the Maya culture and therefore one of the most important original sources of information regarding the Maya culture. I have chosen to reinvent one page from the Dresden Codex. My process will include papermaking and using an intaglio process to recreate this page. This process is quite different from that one the painted and folded codex. I believe that recreating one of these pages as an intaglio print is important because it gave me insight into the process of recreation as well as explore a different process that the Dresden could have been made using, that process being printmaking of some kind.

For the print I am going to make, I will be using homemade paper, which is a practice that the Maya would
This gave me a much more solid understanding for the process of papermaking. The paper itself is made from the fibers of a species of Ficus tree, called Amate in Yukatek, and coated with a fine layer of lime plaster. To make this paper, first bark from trees is collected, torn into small bits, and then soaked over a period of time to soften the bark for when it is turned into pulp. Once the pulp reaches the desired level it is rinsed with clean water and then kept in water until it is processed. The pulp is then arranged onto boards and beaten into a thin flat paper. The paper is then taken to dry, which could have taken anywhere from two hours to two days depending on the