The Golden Sun Bird (simplified Chinese: 太阳神鸟金饰) , is an ancient artifact, unearthed in 2001 at Jinsha archaeological site located in the city of Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China.

It is made of extremely thin gold foil, circular in shape, with hollow patterns inside, and is made with exquisite craftsmanship. The pattern consists of four birds, flying in the same counterclockwise direction, located around the perimeter. The center is a sun pattern with twelve points. The piece dates back to the late Sanxingdui period (around 1200–1050 BCE).

The Golden Sun Bird is a national first-class cultural relic in China (included in the list of cultural relics prohibited from exporting for exhibition), and its pattern is used as a symbol to represent China's cultural heritage.

[About the model]

The model is drawn point-for-point based on the official pictures of the Jinsha Site Museum. It's not a perfect circle, and all four birds have slightly different shapes. This is easy to understand - the craftsmanship of 3000 years ago cannot make an absolute circle, and there is no modeling software to copy and paste.

Plate 1: The scale of the model is 1:1, the same as the real thing, with a diameter of 125.3mm and a thickness of 0.2mm.Because it is only 0.2mm thick, it can only print two layers. The first layer is 0.12 and the second layer is 0.08. You need to wait for it to cool before carefully shoveling it off with a spatula.

It doesn’t matter if it’s not flat after shoveling it off, the real thing is not flat either…

plate 2: The thickness of this model is expanded to 1mm. This way it won't warp as easily as real gold foil. This would make a cool bookmark or ornament.

This is my second model of ancient Chinese cultural relics. I wish you success in printing and enjoy it!