The effort involved in prototyping the kavad design continues apace. Because I think that the path of hermetic thought is closely related to the path of creative design that I’m trying to develop a teaching process for at my school, I’m building a digital model of this storyteller’s box, based loosely on the kavad of the Sacred Geometer that I first saw at Wesley University. It’s proving quite useful, actually — I can’t model the pivoting parts, unfortunately, but I can create fairly precise measurements and point to where the hinges and pivot points are going to be.
I think my biggest challenge right now is that I don’t really see a way to support the upper chamber on top of the lower chamber except by two relatively thin columns. If those columns are wood, all’s well and good (probably), but it’s less than ideal if the whole thing is foam board, glue and paint.
If you click through to my Flickr account, there’s about twelve related images of this digital model of the Kavad, and you can get a sense of the scale — on most people, the thing is about knee-high when standing on the ground, and (currently) it folds out to about four feet wide. I count about 15 major panels where artwork can go, plus the four outside walls and the roof inside and out… so that makes twenty major surfaces, and maybe another 10-15 minor surfaces. It’s not bad for telling a complex story, I think.
Via Flickr:
Another view of the backside of the kavad’s internal doors. Here you can also see that the lid of the upper chamber is open, and that the internal drawer on the back side has been pulled out.
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