Prague-based jewellery design studio Zorya has grown an 18-armed chandelier from crystals within the Museum of Decorative Arts in Dresden, Germany.
Made using controlled mineral crystallisation and based on a Theresian era design, the chandelier is the focus of an exhibition called From Dust to Glitter or How a Crystal Chandelier grows, that is currently on show at the museum's Pillnitz Palace.

The project was initiated when the director of the Museum of Decorative Arts, Tulga Beyerle, spotted Zorya's prototype of the current chandelier at the 2012 edition of the K?ehkĂ˝ Mikulov art design festival.
Here it was on show as a proposal stemming from the studio's Virus jewellery collection that was created in 2011 using a controlled mineral crystallisation process. Impressed by the chandelier prototype, Beyerle asked the designers to create a similar design for the museum.

It took six years to develop the controlled crystallisation process required for a work of this scale.
The bespoke chandelier was grown in a temporary laboratory set up on the premises of a former coffee-roasting factory in Prague's Vyso?any district, before being assembled in-situ at the museum over several weeks by the founders of Zorya, designers Zden?k Vacek and Daniel Po?ta.
The process involved submerging each of the chandelier's eighteen stainless steel arms in five thousand litres of a potassium aluminium sulphate solution for several weeks.

As a result of time and temperature changes, the chandeli...