Kaleidoscopes

Two kaleidoscope projects at radically different scales, connected by the same fascination with mirrors, geometry, and the human impulse to find pattern in chaos.

A handmade wooden kaleidoscope built around a triangular mirror arrangement. Named for Ernst Haeckel, the 19th-century biologist who catalogued the geometric forms of microscopic organisms — radiolaria, diatoms, jellyfish — and revealed that nature's deepest structures are kaleidoscopic.

The scope is housed in a solid oak case with a brass handle. Looking through the triangular viewport, objects and light sources explode into crystalline symmetries. The effect is immediate and physical — your brain can't help but try to parse the pattern, even knowing it's generated by three flat mirrors.

A tower-scale kaleidoscope designed for museum installation. The mirrored interior is housed in a conical timber-and-steel structure — visitors look up into the apex and see themselves replicated into a living geometric mandala.

Where the Haeckel scope is intimate and handheld, this version is architectural. The mirror geometry is the same three-fold symmetry, but scaled to encompass the viewer's entire body. You don't look through it — you stand inside it.