A different kind of whitework

Nearly 30 years ago I did a degree in Design (Visual Communication). It was absolutely formative in bringing me to where I am today.

Probably because of some feedback from one of my uni assignments, I came to believe that I wasn’t very good at pushing my designs. I think I understood that I settled for “yeah, that will do” way too early. However, looking back at this project, I don’t think that was entirely true. (Since then, this is something that I have striven to do: push my designs hard to ensure that they are well resolved.)

I call this my mace and it was made for my model making class. It is made of glue and light-weight card only. It came from my imagination, from ideas gleaned elsewhere and reinterpreted through experimentation.

I wanted to make a sphere. I probably had seen in a book how they could be pieced together rather like patchwork, from geometrical shapes. And doing that would have been interesting enough, but I wanted to take my design further.

A square pyramid was substituted for a square “patch”. The triangular shapes became triangular pyramids. I still wanted to take my design further.

I inverted the point of the pyramids through a hole cut in the base. I didn’t bend the paper point through the hole in the base – that would not have worked as the paper would have crumpled! I cut the pattern shape, then folded and manipulated the parts through the hole and then glued them together in the final shape. Although it was 30 years ago, I still remember it was incredibly fiddly!

I made 30 of these square pyramids. They were glued together as the main framework. In the centre of each space between, I fitted an inverted pyramid with an equilateral triangle base. That left isosceles triangles between. I decided it was going to be WAY too hard to make isosceles inverted pyramids, so they are just “patches”.

Being 30 years old, some of the points are now looking a little bent, however I am still incredibly proud of it. I feel this is one of the most original things I have ever made. Somehow I turned flat paper and glue into this spiky, menacing ball!