Fate keeps sending wonderful people my way, and at the moment, it seems to be particularly favouring those with mathematical information to share! No, not stocks and shares! Just knowledge of maths and how it could possibly apply to beadwork.
You see, something I’ve started to notice with beadwork is how often it mimics or replicates natural shapes or forms. So, for example, every other customer walks in, sees our rings and says ‘oooh, they look like sea anenomes’. It was that reaction that prompted us to name them ‘Ocean Floor’.
Left - photograph of a Nudibranch anenome by Jacques Devos (click image for his Flickr stream). Right - Ocean Floor rings.
Likewise, one of our lovely and knowledgeable customers pointed out that our Thousand Hills necklaces are remarkably similar to Girdled Lizards.
Left - Thousand Hills Necklace in elemental form. Right - A Girdled Lizard. This photo is all over the internet but I can't find the source. Anyone know?!
We also noticed the ability that certain mathematical sequences had to produce intensely nature-like shapes, such as the one-two-one-two sequence we use to make our flowers.
A fringed flower
Enter the lovely people who drift into my shop! I consider myself truly lucky for the customers and visitors who come here. So many are highly knowledgeable and skilled.
Mary, who was exhibiting her amazing mandalas at Montebello’s Art Box a few weeks ago, introduced me to the Institute for Figuring. They are dedicated to making mathematics more understandable and tangible by making crochet models of mathematical concepts. And it turns out, the one-two-one-two pattern I described which produces such a nature-like effect is used by these crocheters to make ‘hyperbolic planes’.
A 'Hyperbolic Plane' Click for the IFF Gallery
And the lovely Kechil, a fellow poetry lover, a wonderfully enthusiastic astronomer not to mention computer scientist, introduced me yesterday to Mandelbrot Fractals. She was followed by a customer who told me there had been the development of a near perfect three dimensional Mandelbrot structure. And today a customer mentioned Projective Geometry. I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited about maths before!
I can feel the possibilities, and I know something good is on it’s way. Luckily for me, I have two staff members with Economics degrees, and another with an Honours in Demographics, so I’m not alone in my love of maths. Right now at home, Estella is attempting a Hyperbolic Plane similar to this example from the IFF:
And Mado is attempting ‘flowers’ with different increase sequences. Now the challenge is Mandelbrot, that’s going to be interesting!
