William the Hippo

3D Model

A 3D scan of the beloved William the Hippo from a recent trip to The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

ca. 1961–1878 B.C.

“This statuette of a hippopotamus (popularly called “William”) was molded in faience, a ceramic material made of ground quartz. Beneath the blue glaze, the body was painted with lotuses. These river plants depict the marshes in which the animal lived, but at the same time their flowers also symbolize regeneration and rebirth as they close every night and open again in the morning…The hippo’s modern nickname first appeared in 1931 in a story that was published in the British humor magazine Punch. It reports about a family that consults a color print of the Met’s hippo—which it calls “William”—as an oracle. The Met republished the story the same year in the Museum’s Bulletin, and the name William caught on!”

Created using 560 images taken through glass with an Canon 5D Mark IV and processed in RealityCapture.