Coffee mosaic is a record winner
Have you ever seen a sand mandala? It is truly a thing of beauty – I saw one a few years ago made by monks in a garden in Glastonbury – thousands and thousands of grains of coloured sand had been formed into a stunning pattern which looked a little like a beautiful carpet. At the end of the exhibition, the mandala would be destroyed… Along similar lines, the Guinness Book of Records has a new entrance but rather than using grains of sand to create a beautiful design, this time the substance which has been painstakingly arranged is coffee beans. The artist comes from Albania and he has created a mosaic out of coffee beans in the design of five musicians – a Brazilian dancer, two drummers – one from Japan and one from Africa, an American country singer and a European accordion player.
It is said that he used a million beans to make the mosaic. As such, he has entered the Guinness Book of Records as the largest mosaic made using this medium. Apparently, the materials weighed round 140g.
Strati is not a newcomer to record-breaking – this is in fact his sixth entry in the Record Books. He has also made a nail-portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci, used toothpicks to make a horse design and created a Michael Jackson image with paint brushes, a screw-image of Homer and also used corks from wine bottles to make a scenic picture of the Mediterranean. We wonder what he has up his sleeve for his next trick…