Open Menu 0

Journal

Is that an engraved “Hair-ley Davidson”?

microscopic engraved gift

Ok, our last blog post introduced the work of Willard Wigan, the micro engraver from Birmingham who has made a name for himself around the world creating art in the eye of a needle.

But we were holding back on, what we think, is possibly the most astonishing creation ever seen (or, more accurately… seen with very great difficulty).

We tried to describe how small some of the sculptures were that Mr Wigan produced, but this one really does blow our minds in its microscopic proportions.

In 2013, Willard Wigan crafted his tiniest work to date.

After having a shave, the micro-engraver touched his face with his finger and found a tiny dot of hair embedded in his fingerprint.

He took this fleck of stubble.

Then he hollowed out the piece of hair.

And, with a spec of gold smaller than a human blood cell, carved the inimitable detail of the classic Orange County Chopper bicycle.

The tiny artwork took 16 hours a day for five weeks to make, and measures just three microns in length.

So small and fragile is the bike, that Willard had to control the pulse in his finger as even that would have been strong enough to crush the sculpture.

To give another sense of the scale of the piece, not even a dust mite would be small enough to ride the Chopper bike.

The item was created to see just how small something could be made, and Mr Wigan has said that even he surprised himself with what could be done.

He was awarded an MBE by the Queen in 2007, and today sees his creations sold for hundreds of thousands of pounds.

As a rule, the smaller they get then the more expensive they become. So, if this is the smallest artwork that can be created, then we only wonder at how much this personalised gift could be.