Bakery & Curios

Building Conway's Curios shop and the Mandelbrot Bakery: two years of CNC routing, laser engraving, and hand-finishing in Edmund's Arkansas workshop, converging at Duke University in July 2021.

Conway's Curios shop interior at the exhibition; Harriet the rabbit shopkeeper figure holding a book, the dark Mandelbrot oven door at left, Voronoi hexagonal window panels with dark blue fabric, pentagon window inserts along the base, fruit basket hanging above

The assembled Curio Shop and Bakery structure on the workshop floor; the balcony wave-pattern railing, honeycomb and pentagon window cuts in the base walls, and the Bakery grid roof beams visible

Conway's Curios shop frame on the workshop workbench; the white-painted bay window grid panel assembled, tools and plywood sheets across the large workshop behind

CNC router cutting the bay window grid panels for Conway's Curios; rows of rectangular compartments emerging from MDF, fresh sawdust surrounding the bit

Conway's Curios shop interior open to the back, with a measuring tape showing roughly 18-inch height; laser-cut tree and a golden torus knot hanging in the windows, a small wreath at top

Edmund assembling the large heptagonal base structure in the workshop; plywood walls with circle-packing and pentagon cutout patterns, collaborator peering over the top edge, diagonal bracing visible

Edmund Harriss in the garage lifting the nearly finished Conway's Curios shop; the wave-pattern railing and painted exterior visible, clamps and workshop tools on the bench behind him

Conway's Curios shop viewed from above in the garage; the grid roof beams, balcony railing, and interior shelving visible from overhead, the shop sitting on its heptagonal base

CNC router carving sinusoidal wave-pattern railing panels; multiple panels being cut simultaneously, the wave motif emerging clearly from white plywood

CNC router with all the balcony railing panels for Conway's Curios cut; multiple wave-pattern rectangular panels laid out on the CNC bed with fresh sawdust

Voronoi hexagonal window panels for Conway's Curios; irregular pentagon cells in white-painted plywood with black acrylic mirror inserts, gold reflection catching the light in one cell

The Bakery's laser-cut brick facade clamped flat on the workshop bench; the arched oven door opening, individual brick tiles, and Celtic knot insert panel at the base, being glued together

Professional studio shot of the Bakery oven door mould; a black rubber arched form with Apollonian circle-packing pattern and side mounting tabs, on a white background

Professional studio shot of the Apollonian gasket oak triangle panel; concentric inscribed spheres carved in relief in a triangular arrangement, the pattern repeating at every scale, on a white background

Professional studio shot of the cart wheel; a terracotta-coloured ceramic disk with Apollonian circle-packing pattern, central hole for the axle, on a white background

The terracotta Apollonian cart wheel leaning against the Bakery base in the workshop; Voronoi floor tile stack to the right

The Bakery roof Mandelbrot hexagonal tile in the laser cutter; the Mandelbrot set rendered in the tile's grid, cut from amber-coloured acrylic

Three collaborators painting the Bakery brick wall white at the Duke assembly week; a woman in a blue top, a man kneeling, and a woman in a pi t-shirt (likely Ingrid Daubechies) standing, the oven arch facade and hexagonal tiles visible

Blue Mandelbrot set graphic painted on a large white foam wall panel at the Duke assembly; the set rendered in brushed blue paint, roughly two feet across

Bakery and Curio Shop section at the Duke assembly; the open grid roof, bay window and pentagon base panels, with colourful Sierpinski triangle pieces leaning against the wall behind

The backing boards for CNC-carving showing all that had been cut, formulas, gears, a bookcase, musical notation, and a large dancing figure with flowing hair carved in low relief