Escher-inspired hexagonal tessellation of fish in a handmade bowl Art Gallery: Escher-style Tessellations in Real Materials like wood, clay, ceramics, and plastic Lego pieces Bruce Bilney's chessboard with kangaroo and (australian) continent tessellation

Real materials 24:
Wooden Chessboards: Turtles Tessellated, and Escher's Lizard Tessellation
by Kevin Lee



chessboard: a turtle tessellation carved from thin plywood by a laser

Check out the two chessboards on this page. The turtle tessellation pattern above is by Jos Ley. The gecko/lizard pattern below is, of course, a popular tessellation motif by M. C. Escher.College professor Kevin Lee carved these chessboards from wood in the early half of 2013. His tools were a computer-guided laser router/cutter, his hands, and the rear wheels of his car.


Escher-style chessboard made of lizard tessellation cracks in the ceramic dish
Above: Kevin and his computer-guided laser at work.
cracks in the ceramic dish
Above: Kevin's hands at work.
cracks in the ceramic dish
Above: Kevin's car butt at work.

Yes, a car butt. Yes, really. Apparently, for really fine precision woodwork one needs to use a frikkin' laser and thousands of pounds of metal suspended on rubber and air. Who would've guessed??

You can see more of his tessellation work, including a movie about the making of these chessboards, tessellation games, and software for making tessellations, at Kevin Lee's website, www.Tesselmaniac.com.