The holder of the new Guinness World Record for the smallest hand-made sculpture is so tiny that it is invisible to the naked eye. Completed last year and officially confirmed in a Guinness press announcement, micro-artist David Lindon has created a red Lego brick with dimensions equivalent to a single human white blood cell. Using a specially calibrated light microscope, Lindon meticulously crafted a sculpture measuring just 0.02517mm by 0.02184mm.
Each sculpture is meticulously crafted by attaching microblading needles to instrument screwdrivers, many of which have additional microscopic attachments. These tools are made from silicon carbide, a material that is second only to diamonds in hardness.
The sculpting process involved months of planning and meticulous work using a handmade toolset. Lindon dedicated 6-10 hours at a time to this project, working only at night to minimize disruptions from traffic vibrations. On a personal note, the self-proclaimed “micro-artist” even had to control his breathing to avoid disturbing the extremely delicate construction process.
“Even the pulse of my heart beating through my fingers creates too much movement,” he mentioned in the Guinness World Record announcement.
In the end, Lindon successfully crafted three separate Lego bricks, each smaller than the width of a human hair and capable of fitting on a pinhead. The first brick, an eight-spot Lego piece, officially holds the title of the narrowest handmade structure ever built, while a four-spot brick is four times smaller than the previous record set in 2017 by Lindon’s friend and fellow micro artist, Willard Wigan. His final sculpture, a single-dot Lego brick, also became his quickest project, completed in approximately 20 minutes faster than his previous works.
Lindon, a former engineer for the UK’s Ministry of Defense, ventured into micro-sculptures in 2019, creating pieces like miniature versions of Van Gogh paintings that could fit on a watch mechanism. His upcoming project, “The Smallest Zoo in the World,” set to be released later this year, will feature an animal menagerie sculpted into the eyes of needles.
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