Bridges 2025 Exhibition of Mathematical Art, Craft, and Design

Ellie Baker, Susan Goldstine

Artists

Susan Goldstine

Professor of Mathematics

St. Mary's College of Maryland

St. Mary's City, Maryland, USA

sgoldstine@smcm.edu

http://faculty.smcm.edu/sgoldstine/gallery/mathart.html

Ellie Baker

Artist and Computer Scientist

Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

ellie.baker@post.harvard.edu

https://www.ellie-baker.com

Statement

Bead crochet rope has a visual and tactile allure that is hard to resist. For the crafter, the technique is meditatively repetitive and the bead color and texture choices endless. But for the mathematically minded, the greatest fascination is in creating bracelet patterns. Behind the deceptively simple and uniform arrangement of beads is a subtle geometry that produces compelling design challenges and fascinating mathematical structures. Our long collaborative exploration of the mathematics of bead crochet has deeply influenced our work as mathematical artists. A second edition of our bead crochet design book, Crafting Conundrums, is forthcoming.

Artworks

Image for entry 'Crystallographic Napkin Ring Series'

Crystallographic Napkin Ring Series

10.0 x 72.0 x 72.0 cm

Glass and sterling beads, digital prints on cotton fabric, thread

2025

In 2012, we exhibited a sampler of wallpaper patterns with corresponding bead crochet bracelets. Since then, Charles Wampler showed us we can use multiple bead sizes cleverly to make formerly excluded order 4 symmetries. This discovery and the new edition of our book inspired us to make a new sampler of every symmetry group attainable in bead crochet, including the new order 4 designs and a few groups that force trivial patterns. Here is a sampler of 15 napkins with matching napkin rings, each representing a different wallpaper group. The two omitted groups are provably incompatible with bead crochet. Our thanks to Scott Vorthmann, who added features to our new bead crochet design software to support printing bead crochet patterns on fabric