At the end of August, our project team 3D-digitised 30 mining lamps in 4 days as part of a collaboration between the PURE3D project and the Nederlands Mijnmuseum located in Heerlen. The mining museum tells the story of Dutch coal mining from 1903 until the government closed the last mine in the Dutch province of Limburg in 1974. The lamps themselves represent an evolution of mine lighting technology from the 1850’s to the 1970’s as well as methods in which the miners could detect gas in the tunnels by measuring the height of the flame. These 30 particular lamps are part of a personal collection and are on loan to the Nederlands Mijnmuseum for the purposes of 3D digitisation and valorisation. A similar initiative with the Nederlands Mijnmuseum was recently performed by MA students in Digital Cultures from Maastricht University as part of the course ‘Creating Digital Collections’. You can check out their wonderful work on the project website.

Some major challenges for performing photogrammetry with these kinds of objects is how translucent the glass is, how loose and moveable the extraneous parts are, and how shiny the metal is. Time will tell whether our care and creative solutions will result in feasible 3D models. In the meantime, keep up with our progress as we share challenges and results on our Twitter page @PURE3DNL.