Making a copy of the Csorna Diadem

3 min readTripont Heritage editorial team

Gold band of the Csorna Diadem with red and green stone inlays

Hungarian National Museum

text: Zsuzsanna Hajnal

Making a copy of the Csorna Diadem (Csornai diadém)

From Phase One XF camera images, using photogrammetry

During the renovation of the Premonstratensian Abbey of Csorna (Csornai Premontrei Apátság) in 2019, a visitor centre was created in the building. For the newly installed exhibition, the order asked for a copy of the diadem kept in the Hungarian National Museum, which comes from a Hunnic-period woman’s grave that was disturbed in 1887 in the brickyard of the Csorna abbey and was saved by Canon Ambró Lakner. Very little time was available for making the copy. Moreover, because of the extreme fragility of the original object and the technique of its stone inlays, contact sampling (making a silicone negative mould by pouring it around the object and removing it once it has set) and making a copy in that way were out of the question, because the diadem would have been damaged in any case. So the museum’s conservators decided that the only solution was to create a high-resolution 3-dimensional digital model and then to 3D-print it. Tripont CHS specialists made the raw images with a Phase One XF camera in several rows, rotating the object by 5 degrees each time, and software assembled from them a 3D model of great detail and accuracy. The object is decorated with 149 stone inlays. These garnet, carnelian, amber and green glass inlays had to be made separately from a translucent material so that the copy could reproduce the appearance and overall impression of the original as well as possible. Therefore, before printing, the digital file was modified and the places of the stones were recessed. The raw 3D print was gilded by the museum’s conservators, who made imitations of the original stone inlays and set them in. The copy can be seen in the restored library hall of the Premonstratensian Provostry of Csorna. The diadem itself is a unique find in the Carpathian Basin. With the appearance of the Huns in Europe, not only did a new empire and a new population appear, but a distinctive fashion trend also spread among the barbarians living north of the Roman Empire: the fashion of various stone inlays (mainly garnets) proliferating over the surface of gold objects, of jewellery made of gold-plated copper or with a silver core, and of other metalwork. The lady with the high forehead and deformed skull, on whose head the diadem was found at Csorna in the provostry’s brickyard, certainly belonged to one of the most distinguished families of the 5th-century Carpathian Basin. While in the East European steppe zone diadems have been found in many places, from Moldavia through the Crimean Peninsula to the foothills of the Caucasus, in the graves of women in characteristic eastern dress, in the Carpathian Basin the Csorna one is the only such piece of jewellery.