Lucite Cube // Iron

Iron is practically synonymous with metal. It's the skeleton of your car and your refrigerator and the bolts in the chair you’re sitting on. But iron’s ubiquity belies its rarity as a pure element. Iron rusts easily which is why, as soon as it’s refined, in goes chromium, molybdenum, vanadium and other ingredients to make it less susceptible to those other “elements”: the rain, the sea and high humidity which turn iron back into the crusty, earthy mess known as rust.

So a collector wishing for a piece of highly purified iron for their collection has to procure it not from a steel refinery but from a laboratory - at, of course, many times the cost of a piece of find-anywhere steel.

This specimen is a little of that specialty, trapped under an inert and moisture-free environment to ensure it can never rust. But more than that, this iron has been turned into little balls so perfectly spherical that they flow from side to side like a liquid.

We have absolutely no idea what application called for this level of perfection in manufacture - labs sure have strange requirements - but we’re thankful to have located such a stellar piece.