Strati, who has already set six Guinness World Records using different industrial materials, is creating a 62-m2 double-headed eagle, the symbol of Albania’s national flag, this time in neighbouring Kosovo using beans
TIRANA, Nov. 19 – Albanian artist Saimir Strati is seeking a new Guinness World Record for the largest beans mosaic. Strati, who has already set six Guinness World Records using different industrial materials, is creating a 62-m2 double-headed eagle, the symbol of Albania’s national flag, this time in neighbouring Kosovo as a gift to the 100th anniversary of independence. For Saimir Strati, this will be the first mosaic using beans. In late 2011, Strati created a coffee bean mosaic which gave him the sixth Guinness World Record title.
Strati is using 500 kg of beans, some 1,350,000 pieces. “I have chosen the Albanian flag as a topic. We are on the centenary of independence and I wanted the symbolism to be that part of our spiritual food, which is the national flag,” says Strati. Speaking to VoA in the local Albanian service, Strati says he chose Kosovo and its capital Prishtina in acknowledgement of its contribution to Albania’s independence. Strati is expected to finish his mosaic on Nov. 26 when a Guinness World Record team will travel to Prishtina to measure his latest creation.
“We have a 3,500 year heritage of mosaic and I would like to keep alive the Illyrian heritage that has remained,” says Strati.
In late 2011, Albania’s Saimir Strati set his sixth personal Guinness World Record for the world’s largest mosaic, this time using around a million coffee beans, depicting five musicians. Strati used 140 kg (309 pounds) of coffee beans, some roasted black, some averagely and some not roasted at all, to portray a Brazilian dancer, a Japanese drummer, a U.S. country music singer, a European accordionist and an African drummer.
Already a holder of five Guinness World records for the largest mosaics including the new coffee bean work, Strati’s Guinness journey started in Sept. 2006 when he created the largest metal nail mosaic. The 8m2 (86.11 sq. feet) mosaic featured a portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci. Two years later, he entered the Guinness World Record for the largest cork mosaic is 91.87 mҠ(988 ftҩ with the theme ‘Mediterranea.’
In Sept. 2009 he created the largest paint brush mosaic measuring 26 mҠdepicting pop star Michael Jackson.
In Nov. 2010, he set a new world record when he made the largest screw artwork contained 235,500 metal screws in an artwork depicting the poet Homer on a banknote.
Born in Vlora, Saimir Strati, 45, is an Albanian artist who is regarded as one of the world’s most well known modern mosaic artists.
Saimir Strati is primarily an artist who works in mosaics. He has used materials including nails, toothpicks, corks, sea glass, eggshells, compact discs, coffee beans, porcelain and mirror glass among other materials. He is also a painter. The diversity of the artist’s subjects, material and technique distinguish Saimir Strati as being traditional and contemporary with his approach on reviving the old technique and professionalism in antiquity and the mingling of daily industrial material.
