Unicorn

Origin and myth

The unicorn began as a report of a real animal. Ctesias of Cnidus, a Greek physician at the Persian court around 400 BC, wrote of wild asses in India the size of horses, white-bodied with dark red heads and blue eyes, bearing a single horn a cubit and a half long on the forehead, white at the base, black in the middle and crimson at the tip. Cups made from the horn, he said, protected against poison. Scholars think he was describing the Indian rhinoceros at second hand.

The Greek Bible rendered the Hebrew re'em, a wild ox, as monokeros, and so the unicorn entered scripture. The Physiologus, a Greek text of the 2nd to 4th century AD, added the story that made the creature famous: the unicorn is too fierce to be caught by hunters, but if a virgin sits in the forest it will come and lay its head in her lap, where it can be captured. Medieval bestiaries read this as an allegory of Christ and the Virgin, and the unicorn became a symbol of purity, and of Christ himself, in art across Europe.

The image reached its peak in the late 15th and early 16th centuries with the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries in Paris and the Unicorn Tapestries now in New York, and in Scottish heraldry, where the unicorn has been a royal supporter since the 15th century.

Appearance

The medieval unicorn is not simply a horse with a horn, and a sculptor who wants a historically grounded model should look at the tapestries. The body is that of a small horse or large goat, lighter and more delicate than a warhorse, with a slightly arched back. The head is horse-like but narrower, with a goat's beard beneath the chin. The legs end in cloven hooves like a deer's, and the tail is a lion's tail with a tuft at the end, not a horse's tail.

The horn is the focal point: a single straight spiral rising from the centre of the forehead, about the length of the head and neck together, twisted like a narwhal tusk and tapering to a sharp point.

The modern unicorn, by contrast, is a full-sized horse with solid hooves, a horse's tail and a horn. Colour is white, sometimes with a golden horn and hooves. Eyes are dark or, following Ctesias, blue.

In modern fantasy

The unicorn is a creature of good in nearly every modern setting: Dungeons & Dragons, the Chronicles of Narnia, the Harry Potter books, My Little Pony and countless games and toys. Tabletop players use it as a paladin's mount, a forest guardian or a druid's companion.

3D printing notes

A unicorn is a horse-shaped print with one extra fragile part. At 28-32 mm, use resin: print the body at a 30 degree tilt with supports at the hooves, belly and jaw, and support the horn along its length or print it pointing upward so it needs none. The horn is the most likely part to break; a slightly thickened base helps.

At 75 mm, resin gives the finest mane and beard, but FDM with a 0.4 mm nozzle at 0.12 mm layers can produce a good body if the model is printed standing with the horn as a separate resin or FDM part pinned into a hole in the forehead.

For a 150 mm or larger centrepiece, print the body in FDM, the head and horn in resin, and mount the model on a forest base. A pose with one foreleg raised and the head turned is elegant and stable if the tail touches a stump or rock.

Painting and display

White is best built in layers: a light grey base, a blue-grey or lilac wash in the recesses, and dry-brushed off-white and pure white on the highlights. Give the mane and tail tuft a touch of ivory or pale gold so they read differently from the coat. The beard and hooves can be a warm grey. The horn should stand out: pearl white with gold or silver highlights, or a spiral of gold paint following the twist.

A forest base with moss, ferns and a fallen log suits the medieval setting. For lighting, a soft warm LED behind a translucent horn gives a gentle glow appropriate to the creature; keep it subtle.

Related creatures

The Pegasus is the unicorn's companion among noble white horses, and the Chinese Qilin is the horned, gentle beast of the East that Western writers called the Chinese unicorn. The Kazakh Tulpar and the Hippogriff are other legendary steeds of Central Asia and Europe.

If you would like a unicorn, medieval or modern, printed for your table or your shelf, contact Fantasy Lab 3D through the contact form.