Albanian Artist Cobbles Record Nail and Toothpick Mosaics
Albanian artist Saimir Strati is the Michaelangelo of the hammer.
In view of this particular creation, perhaps Leonardo da Vinci would be a better comparison. Strati used the old master’s image to create the largest known mosaic ever cobbled together entirely from nails.
A lot of nails. Strati says he lost track of the exact count, but figures his rendition of Leonardo’s self-portrait contains something on the order of 400 kilos (880 pounds) of various size nails. Guinness estimated the finished mosaic at around a half million nails.
Strati starts by sketching his work on a plywood backing, then applying nails of various depths “pixel by pixel” like a television or computer image. The Leonardo image was completed in September of 2006, and still holds the world record in the rough-and-tumble world of competitive nail mosaic design. Last September, Strati set a second mosaic record: a 8 square meter rendering of a horse made from 1.5 million toothpicks.
