The world’s smallest handmade sculpture is a blood cell-sized Lego brick

The new Guinness World Record holder for the smallest hand-made sculpture is so miniscule that you can’t even see it with the naked eye. Completed late last year and confirmed this week in a Guinness press announcement, micro-artist David Lindon has managed to build a red Lego brick with dimensions equal roughly to that of a single human white blood cell. Lindon used a specially calibrated light microscope to craft the sculpture that measures just 0.02517mm by 0.02184mm.

Each one is built by mounting microblading needles on the ends of instrument screwdrivers, many of which then feature additional microscopic attachments. The tools are made from silicon carbide, a material whose hardness is surpassed only by diamonds.

The process required months of planning, followed by even more months of painstaking sculpting using a handmade toolset. Lindon worked 6-10 hours at a time, but only at night to lessen the likelihood of disruptions from traffic vibrations. On a personal level, the self-described “micro-artist” also learned to slow his breathing to work without disturbing the incredibly sensitive construction project.

“Even the pulse of my heart beating through my fingers creates too much movement,” he said in the Guinness World Record announcement.

In the end, Lindon actually built three separate Lego bricks—each of which are less than the width of a human hair and easily fit on a pinhead. The first, an eight-spot Lego piece is officially recognized as the narrowest handmade structure ever built, while a four-spot brick measured 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 yet by around 20 minutes.

Lindon, a former engineer for the UK’s Ministry of Defense, first began working on micro-sculptures in 2019, and soon created pieces such as miniature recreations of Van Gogh paintings that fit on a watch mechanism. Follow-up projects included micro balloon dogs similar to those made famous by artist Jeff Koons.

According to the BBC, Lindon isn’t planning on sticking with microscopic recreations of classic toys. His next project scheduled to release later this year, “The Smallest Zoo in the World,” will include an animal menagerie sculpted into the eyes of needles. 

 

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