Boustrophedon

This is to certify that the my sculpture entitled BOUSTROPHEDON was completed in in September, 2008. The design of this work is based on a much smaller sculpture made as part of the Blind Alphabet Project in 1993. The original piece was made small enough so that it could be picked up and easily handled by a blind person. The present-day work is made in Imbuia (Phoebe porosa), a wood frequently used in a number of new works. The new piece carries the Braille inscription: "WILLEM BOSHOFF BOUSTROPHEDON".

The original work made for the Blind Alphabet Project was accompanied by a Braille plaque containing the text:

BOUSTROPHEDON, BOUSTROPHEDONIC

A Greek bous is an 'ox', in this case, the ox as an animal that ploughs the land. Strophos is a 'turning around', and the Greeks consequently called the windlass on which a capstan runs, a stropheion. A boustrophedon figure, then, is the pattern, described by an ox as it turns back and forth on its tracks to 'map out' the furrows in the land it ploughs. The early Greeks applied the word to their prevailing attempt at writing and reading backwards and forwards in alternate lines. They gave up this unorthodox style around 500 BC in favour of the left-to-right method. The primitive Easter Islanders carved boustrophedonically laid-out designs, called rongo-rongo, on wooden tablets. A boustrophedonic configuration can be observed in the radiator pipes of older makes of automobiles, and in the way the warp is laced onto the frame of a loom, backwards and forwards, across it. The project-shape suggests a tube, twisted around in as few places as possible to still allow a clear understanding of the nature of a boustrophedonic design. The piece was made on Thursday, 22 July 1993 of Kiaat (Pterocarpus angolensis).