About

The Kassel Hand Project was a two-year case study at Auburn University to develop a method for using 3D-printed models to study historical prosthetic artifacts by focusing on one sixteenth-century iron hand from Kassel, Germany. Prosthetic artifacts are rare, extremely fragile sources that display the experiences and perspectives of premodern amputees.  At the heart of the project were the intertwining goals of finding new ways to study these artifacts and to share them widely.

From June 2023 to May 2025, an interdisciplinary team led by historians and mechanical engineers developed a functional printed model of an artifact known as the Kassel Hand (Inv. Nr. KP B XIV.32, Hessen Kassel Heritage — formerly Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel), which features internal mechanisms that lock the artificial fingers in several positions. While the original artifact is made of iron, the Kassel Hand Project team’s work focused on printing in inexpensive plastics using home-grade 3D printers. The case study generated a method for designing historically grounded experimental testing as well as the opportunity to share printable files of the model used in our experiments.

By creating wearable versions of a premodern artifact, the project puts historical prostheses back into a lived context as wearable devices and opens possibilities for interactive investigations for researchers, educators, and the public to learn about how prostheses were used and what their users’ experiences may have been.

The Project was funded by Auburn University’s Creative Work and Social Impact Scholarship Funding Program, along with the assistance of a Renaissance Society of America (RSA) Grant for a Public Engagement Project in Renaissance Studies under the title, “Engineering History: An Experimental Approach to Recovering the Lived Experience of a Sixteenth-Century Amputee.” We are grateful for the support of the Opelika and Montgomery clinics of the Alabama Artificial Limb & Orthopedic Service Inc., as well as those who participated in collaborative conversations about how to engage with amputees during the experiment design process: Gini Thomas, Noah Griffith, Dr. Jacob Baum, and Dr. Gerald Stark. We are also indebted to those individuals who helped us experiment with the model in lab-based sessions and generously offered their time and perspective.