Crystallographic Arts

One way to interest more people in crystallography is by encouraging artists to create works inspired by crystallography. Another way is to 'catch 'em young', I was delighted to see the results of an international crystal growing competition and to learn that in the United States, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA, plans publication of a booklet for schools explaining how to grow crystals from common foods like green beans. They believe that children shown the wonders of science now, as adults will vote more money for NASA projects.

In the following pages I have tried to report on the Art Exhibition, with its poetry, handicrafts and some Scottish history for the education of delegates when they were sated with posters. The Art Exhibition was originally near the Clyde Auditorium but exhibitors felt it was out of the way, so it was moved into the main exhibition area to make a colourful entrance way to the commercial exhibits past hangings such as the one below.

These were arranged by Annegret Haake who became interested in crystallographic patterns while searching for examples of symmetry in everyday life. She had been collecting patterns from Oriental carpets, American patchwork, Javanese batik and tiling patterns on pavements. One day she asked a patchwork teacher to use a model crystal structure as a basis for her patterns. She was enthusiastic about this and told her friends.

Now Annegret has formed a group of artists, known as XX-TEX, which makes handicrafts using all types of TEXtiles from crystallographic (XX) patterns. Their first works were shown in 1990 at the Bordeaux Congress, they make new designs on a common theme for each Congress. This year their work, like the hanging depicted above, is based on contour plots found in J.M.Robertson's papers and in his book 'Organic Crystals and Molecules', 1953. They find that the scientists enjoy seeing the novel interpretations of their diagrams, (some even buy them to hang up at home), and the artists get in touch with an unknown but fascinating science.

Lawrence Bragg may have been the first to suggest using crystallographic patterns for artistic inspiration. In a booklet published for the Festival of Britain in 1951 'THE SOUVENIR BOOK OF CRYSTAL DESIGNS. The fascinating story in colour of the FESTIVAL PATTERN GROUP', he wrote 'When in 1922 I worked out the first crystal of any complexity that had been analysed, aragonite, I remember well how excited my wife was with the pattern I showed her as a motif for a piece of embroidery....'

More Crystallographic Art, philately and history

Doris Büdel made the most intricate creation, a model of the Congress logo shown on the left. She called it "A Very Special Flower". It fits into a cube of side 8cm, Several different techniques were used to make it. The central ball is solid, wound from dark green silk thread using the methods of Japanese Temari work. The petals forming the hexagons on the surface are tatting; the leaves are wire stiffened needlepoint lace. The 'flower head' petals are tatting, crowned with appliqued crystals of amethyst. These were almost the only real crystals to be seen in the whole Congress!

Some three years ago the BCA Council began to urge the UK Post office to issue a set of stamps to commemorate IUCr XVIII in Glasgow. For 1999 the Post Office decided to issue monthly sets of stamps on a common theme; on 3 August 1999, the day before the Congress opened, they issued 'Scientists Tales'.
The stamps were on sale at the 'Messages' Desk in the Exhibition, including this one, the celebration of the discovery of the structure of DNA.

Alan Mackay had some Scottish history on his poster, including the stone balls shown below, which he thought meant that Stone Age Scots were familiar with Group theory.

These granite balls are found mostly in North Eastern Scotland. They are a few cm across; no one knows their use. They are accurately shaped into different polyhedral forms. The icosahedral one in the centre may be a model of a virus? The outer octahedral ones could also be molecular models.

Did Neolithic Scots discover the shapes now erroneously known as the Platonic solids?

The photograph above is copyright the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, where the balls can be seen.

Poem for IUCrXVIII

The poem below was written for the IUCr Glasgow Congress. Part of his "Zen" series, the poet tries to capture the vast scope of crystallography, extending from our macroscopic world to the inner structure of (biological) tissues and finally to a nano-universe in which the atoms themselves loom like giant planets...

The Zen of Scale

Launched on a journey
    across the void of dimensions

from the intricate tapestry of tissues
    to the rhythms encoded in atoms

arriving at last
    to orbit electron-gas giants.

© Robin Shirley 1998

Robin Shirley is an English poet, crystallographer and computer scientist who was brought up in an artistic milieu, his family traditions being split equally between art and sciences. His software article appears later in the 'powder diffraction ' section on page 53.

The very last day....

I found Justin Wark's lecture in the last plenary session, 'Picosecond X-ray diffraction', to be the most exciting, with its prospect of much cheaper, faster X-ray sources using lasers.

The Closing Ceremony was held in the Barony Hall of Strathclyde University, adjacent to the Hall of Residence where many of us were staying. Judith Howard thanked everyone who had helped to make this Congress such a success before inviting Steve Maginn to present the CCDC prizes for the best posters by young scientists. Judged by a panel of distinguished crystallographers, four prizes were awarded. They were (in no particular order): P08.06.010: Peter Muller, Gottingen University, Germany; "Holes in Crystals ?"

- P11.0D.001: Alicia Beatty & Christer Aakeroy, Kansas State University, USA;
"Beyond the first dimension: organic/inorganic hybrid materials assembled via H-bonds"

- P09.09.008: C. Baehtz & H. Fuess, Darmstadt University, Germany;
"Tetrathiafulvalene and tetracyano-p-quinodimethane in faujasite"

- P13.22.003: S. Leoni & R. Nesper; "Tilings on hyperbolic surfaces as representatives of
chemical networks"

The Oxford Cryosystems prize for the best poster associated with cryogenics was awarded to F.Wien for poster P08.01.003 "A portable Cryostream to transfer crystals"

The outgoing IUCr President, Ted Baker, explained he had known this would be a wonderful Congress, years ago, when he had heard Chris Gilmore et al. explaining how to translate Glaswegian. He handed over to the new President, Henk Schenk, who recalled his first visit to an IUCr Congress in Stonybrook, USA, thanked Ted for preparing the IUCr so well for the new century and looked forward to working with us all for the next 3 years.

KateCrennell

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