Human Chromosomes Jewellery
“3D printing is democratising design” is an oft used phrase that trained designers hate because it suggests they’ve had some sort of Mugabe-esque grip over the tools like Photoshop and AutoCAD.
But it does have some legitimacy in that it does enable those, who perhaps could never have dreamt of designing a working product until 3D printing came along.
People like Dr Louise Hughes, an Electron Microscopist at Oxford Brookes University, who has turned her passion for microscopic photography into 3D printed jewellery.
Her ‘Human Chromosome Jewellery Collection’, which launched on Kickstarter two weeks ago, has been designed using real microscopy data combined and converted into printable jewellery.
The jewellery designs are taken from the stage when our cells divide and the chromosomes then form distinct shapes that appear to be XX, XY, which determine our sex and the rarer XXY
These chromosomes combined make fascinating designs for earrings, pendants, bracelets and rings. You can choose your own design in the rewards and Dr Louise Hughes is hoping to create more biogenesis jewellery based on her electron microscopic photography, for which she already has an Etsy shop selling photographs.
Genetic jewellery can be now added to the list of 3D printed jewellery creations after Dyvsign turned fine art into jewellery and Nu created bracelets based on the algorithms of different songs.