r/romandodecahedron

So, I like messing around with clay and decided to give this one ago. I've never seen one made in ceramics before.
I don't think any historical ones were found in ceramics, which is also something to think about.

Anyway, this one is based on the dodecahedron from Tongeren, I used the dimensions as specified by Nouwen.
But he doesn't define what he meant by height, and with puzzling, drawing lines in CAD on various photos, I can only make it kind of fit if he defines height as the distance between oposing vertices with and without knobs.

The Saint-Venant book is clearer and defines it as the distance between opposing faces with and without knobs. The values are different from Nouwen. There could have been more consistency in naming and measuring.
Nouwen also specifies the opposing face diameters, but not the order, so those are somewhat visually based on the pictures I saw.

That said I didn't investigate that deeply, I just wanted to make one, not do a whole literature study.
I think I figured out how to make them way cleaner and neater by including the ornaments as a stamp in the "template" that I use to cut the pentagons. Also the little balls could be a bit neater, I still have to think about that, they are very tiny.

so I 3-D printed it, with castable resin, and then lost wax, cast it in Sterling silver holding it in your hand, wondering about the purpose I think somehow maybe you rolled it like a dice, but the smallest hole has something to do with the overall function of it. I may eventually sell it on eBay. I probably will. I’ll probably cast a bigger one the smaller one it’s just hard to attach the sprue To model.

I've just received a 3D printed copy of a museum scan of a dodecahedron (I'll link the source below). It's great to finally have one in the hand, a few observations now that I can handle it.

• The protrusions feel even more like "feet" to me now - at all angles the object rests stably on 5 feet (more or less).
• The inner circles are very smooth, something could rotate within quite easily.

However the object is still quite baffling, although one thought did occur to me that I'll throw in to the ring - maybe it's a jewellers tool for sizing fingers for ring making. A jeweller might have the skill to create such an object, even though it would be far simpler to make one from wood. Jewellers might copy them from other jewellers once observed. My fingers fit quite nicely into several of the holes, the next step is to find some example ring sizes from the same era to compare.

The scan I used:

https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-dodecahedron-242168

EDIT: There are some Dodecahedron examples where the holes are a bit larger than average finger sizes which makes this idea a bit less likely.