Mosaic: Jewel of the Universe

"Jewel of the Universe" by Chris Chamberlain

via Mail Online

Chris Chamberlain is not your typical artist, but, then again, this isn't your typical piece of art.  The forty-nine year old IT just spent the last two years of his life piecing together this gigantic mosaic map of the Earth from 330,000 hand-cut pieces of stained glass.  Now, he’s hoping to auction the piece on eBay for a cool quarter of a million pounds (US$380,000).

It took Chamberlain six months just to cut the glass into little pieces, and another twenty-one months to position the glass on a 3.18m x 2.18m sheet of perspex using a pair of tweezers.  He then marked out the 1,238 largest cities with 260 carats of jewels, including topaz, amethysts and sapphires.

Once the map was completed,  Chamberlain constructed the frame from another eighty thousand pieces of glass and installed nearly seven thousand LED lights behind the perspex canvas to illuminate the whole thing.

Proceeds from the sale will go toward funding humanitarian projects in Sierra Leone, where Chris’ daughter, Theodora, was born.

   

Jewel of the Universe: presented by its artist Chris Chamberlain