Engraving The Queen In The Eye Of A Needle
By Alex Moss
It can’t be easy choosing a present for the Queen for her 90th but master engraver, Graham Short, has already finished working on something very ambitious indeed.
Graham is not a conventional engraver, he likes to go small, very small. It took him 40 years to engrave the Lord’s Prayer on the head of a pin and while that may be a remarkable feat in itself, he’s gone on to engrave an image of The Last Supper on a razor blade, and even opened up a paper clip and etched ‘All The World’s A Stage, All The Men And Women Are Merely Players’ on the very end of the clip.
Graham’s technique is almost as staggering as the work itself. “Over the years I’ve developed the technique further and further. There’s been a lot of trial and error. The main reason for this is I’m terrified of someone trying to do the same. I take potassium, magnesium and beta blockers, I eat them through the night and they lower my heartbeat.”
They say a surgeon has to have steady hands but Graham takes this to extremes. In order to keep in optimum health he swims 10,000 metres most days, five in the morning and five in the evening. When he engraves he straps his arm and hand down so only his fingers can perform the task. In order to avoid too many noises and distractions Graham works at night through a microscope.
“I can get my heart-rate down to 20 beats per minute and then I try to work between heartbeats when I’m not moving.” It’s a painstakingly intricate job Graham is performing. In a good night he can make roughly seven cuts, that’s the equivalent of the letter ‘E’ and ‘F’.
Graham is all too familiar with the Royal Family. For many years his engraving income came from creating the stationary letter heads for various organisations including all the Royal palaces from Windsor, Buckingham and Balmoral. With The Queen’s 90th Birthday approaching on 21st April 2016 Graham wanted to do something special, something that no one else on the planet could do.
“The Queen has been very kind to artists — she has kept the same hairstyle for the last 35 years!” To honour her birthday Graham set about creating a portrait of the Queen. But unlike so many other artists recognising the birthday of the Monarch, Graham has a unique canvas. “I attempted to do something special. I inserted a speck of gold into the eye of a needle and tried to engrave the portrait on this small ‘canvas’. The size of the engraving, top to bottom, is measured at 100 microns. This is the same as the thickness of a human hair. It took me three months to complete and I ruined over 30 pieces until the final one was finished.”
The results, as you’ll agree from the images, are staggering. Indeed Graham himself is very pleased, as so it would seem is The Queen herself. “I’ve been able to get lots of detail in the crown. I have sent images of it to Her Majesty, and she approves — which is fortunate. I didn’t want to end up in the Tower!”
Graham doesn’t see himself as an artist, “People say I’m an artist but, being honest, I’m an engraver. My work has been displayed in galleries as art but I’m just an ordinary Brummie.” For a man approaching his 70s, the work he produces is anything but ordinary. It seems only right that this national treasure should want to acknowledge another’s 90th Birthday.
