Albanian nail sculptor wins Guinness record registration

TIRANA, Sept. 4 – Albanian artist Saimir Strati managed to be included in the Guinness World Records with a portrait of Leonardo da Vinci he created through hammering tens of thousands of nails into an eight square meters wooden board over the past 24 days creating the world’s biggest nail mosaic. At a ceremony held Monday evening at the Arbnori International Culture Center, or Pyramid, Scott Christie of Guinness confirmed the portrait was considered “a new record for the largest nail mosaic of eight square meters.” The longhair Strati had put the portrait at the main hall of the Pyramid where until 1991 there stood the monument of the late communist dictator Enver Hoxha, for whom the whole building of Pyramid was made as a museum for him. Strati had made a great contrast to the portrait with large-headed nails on the sides of Da Vinci’s flowing grey beard and smaller-headed ones for the shadow below his eyes and chin. The portrait had a frame with yellow nails. Strati said that he had likely used some 400 kilograms of nails trying to resemble camera pixels. The mosaic was considered as “a completely new category” for Guinness.