The Alchemist of Flesh: The Man Who Turned Humans into Stone(2025)
medium.comA long and rambling article with lots of nagging popups, about a potentially interesting subject.
Wikipedia has a summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girolamo_Segato
There is no reveal of his method on wikipedia. Unacceptable in times of er microscopy and gas spectrography. This retro mysthicism is unbearable.
At the time, Italy counted other "single contributor" petrification fellows. See https://www.museogorini.com/pietrificazione_eng.php
Curious if that was also present in other countries.
See also, Gunther von Hagens more recent plastination technique which, as I recall, replaces the water by acetone, then boils the acetone out which draws replacement plastic into the cells. If you use a hard epoxy, you get a solid piece but if you draw in a soft silicone, you will get a much softer texture, and the result can be manipulated and posed.
My friend touched the skin of one of his exhibits (a man flayed, with the skin draped over his outstretched arm) when we went to the Bodyworlds exhibition in London ~20 years ago.