NORDIC BOOKBINDING - NORDIC NATURE 2025
3D-scanning – A story and a disclaimer
Due to a change in format, it was decided that only one country would host and display all the Nordic bindings and bookart exhibits and in 2025, Iceland was to become the first country to host this style of exhibition, replacing the competition style, as in previous years.
As a website would need to be established to host images of all the exhibits, the JAM group wondered what they could do to try and offer something a little different.
On discussing the website hosting with the head conservationist at the National Library, Rannver Hannesson, and the department head, Örn Hrafnkelsson, they suggested that there might be the possibility of borrowing a 3D scanner from the National Museum, on an inter-library loan basis. So, back in the spring of 2024 an idea arose; shall we try and scan a few images to display on the website?
As the only member of the JAM group working at the library, I was given permission to visit the offices of the National Museum, and over the next nine months, under the guidance of their curator of archaeological collections, Hrönn Konráðsdóttir, I was able to learn the basics of how to scan and process 3D images.
So it began. After the exhibits started arriving one by one at the library, I took aside a corner of our restoration department and set up two computers; one laptop and one desktop, both with maximum RAM capacity, as the processing of 3D images is very RAM intensive. We had previously worked out that if we received sixty exhibits, the scanning and processing time would be approximately 2 hours per exhibit, only using one PC. So the idea was while one PC was processing (the longer process), the other would be used for scanning. This indeed was the case, and reduced the predicted 120 hours of work, down to 75 hours or so.
This work was conducted after my usual working hours at the library, so between mid-February and mid-April, my family were unaware of my existence. Having saved so much time by using two PC's, that saving proceeded to disappear when I came across exhibits that were very difficult to scan. After processing, the images then had to be individually uploaded to the hosting platform, so the original 120 hour prediction has far been exceeded.
The Disclaimer - An experiment with 3D scanning
With my limited experience and knowledge, I have tried to reproduce our lovely exhibits into a 3-dimensional interactive experience, for those who are unable to visit our exhibition and also for the exhibitors themselves. Unfortunately, I was unable to produce acceptable scans of all the exhibits, and a message to this affect has been published on the website under the names of those exhibitors.
Some images remain very true to the original look of the exhibit. Some images though have bright spots in certain areas from the 3D camera's flash units, and some images have darkened areas where the lighting was not good enough, and for this I do apologise sincerely.
If an exhibitor is unhappy with the result of their scan, they can of course request for it to be taken down and deleted. The hosting site is Sketchfab, and until the 22nd March 2026 people can search for the username StevieBoy9395 and view all published images. The images can be “liked” and commented on by visitors. The general public can download and purchase images on Sketchfab, but these two settings are disabled within my account. If an exhibitor wishes to enable either or both of these options, please contact me via the email address that was provided to you by the Nordic Bookbinding Society.
This project was an un-paid “Labour of Love” and produced moments of pure joy and excitement along with long spells of complete and absolute frustration. Such is life.
Best regards,
Stephen Hannah – Bookbinder – National Library of Iceland - 19th April 2025