Rubin Vase Brooch — one silhouette, two pictures

A brooch that is a flower vase, and is also two capybaras.

There is one silhouette curve in this model, read two ways. Take the cream shape as the figure and it is a footed trumpet vase with a bouquet rising out of it. Take the brown around it as the figure and the same edge is a capybara in profile — heavy jowl, blunt squared muzzle, a shallow stop, the high flat forehead — facing its twin. The vase's waist IS the animal's snout. Not styled to resemble each other: the same numbers draw both.

Plaque 48.6 × 61.0 × 6.0 mm · backer 32 × 18 × 6 mm · ≈18 g of PLA for the pair.

Why a capybara, and not a cat

The classic version of this illusion hangs on a human nose, and a nose is one feature — so a silhouette that has to be two things at once has only one place to succeed or fail. A capybara is carried by three features, and they land on three different parts of the drawing:

- the blunt muzzle is the near-flat run in the profile — which is also exactly what gives the vase its narrow waist;

- the small round ear is a bump on the brooch's own outline , not a decoration painted on its face;

- the eye sits high and far back, where the vase reading sees only a bead on the shoulder.

Take any one of the three away and the head stops being a capybara and starts being a bear. That is why the plaque is not a rounded rectangle: its left and right edges are the back of each head — nape, skull, ear, crown. Put this artwork on a rectangular plate and the illusion dies.

Two printed pieces, seven named solids

Import capybara_vase_brooch_mc.stl → right-click → Split to Parts → assign a filament per part.

solid

filament

role

plate

colour 1

the plaque — and, in the other reading, the two animals

vase

colour 2

the vase silhouette, flush inlay 0.6 mm

bouquet

colour 3

stems + five blooms rising past the rim

accent

colour 4

belly band + the two eyes, welded together by a buried web

seals ×2

colour 1

the plaque's two magnet lids

backer

colour 1

the plate that goes behind the fabric

backer_seals ×2

colour 1

the backer's two magnet lids

Coordinates are preserved exactly, which is the point — a 0.6 mm flush inlay cannot be re-registered by hand. The per-part STLs ship alongside if you would rather place them yourself.

Four colours, and the colour bill is almost nothing: all four live in the bottom 0.6 mm , so only three layers are bi-colour and the purge is about one gram . Ink volume is free; ink height is the whole bill, and this design has none.

The bouquet is a single solid, so it takes a single filament — a gradient filament there gives the two-tone blooms in the photos for free.

Printing

Front face DOWN, exactly as exported. The front carries all four colours and prints against the bed: the cheapest place for a colour change and the crispest, since the bed finishes the inlay boundary better than any ironing pass. Nothing overhangs.