This is what I call expensive art! While most artists spend money on art supplies, this Ukrainian man actually used money itself. 29-year-old chef Sergei Nikolayev Knurov fashioned a detailed miniature ship out of a variety of Ukrainian coins. The final piece contains a whopping 17,000 coins, with bank notes for sails.
Sergei, a resident of Mykolaiv city in southern Ukraine, first started the project with coins from his piggy bank. But he soon ran out of material – his personal stash only covered the keel. So he began to exchange paper money for coins whenever possible at drug stores and markets, and sometimes with friends. When people found out what the coins were meant for, they were glad to part with their loose change. The coins Sergei used are mainly 2 and 10 kopecks, and the sails are made of 25 five-hryvnia notes.
At first, it wasn’t easy for Sergei to actually create the 3 dimensional model of the ship using just his sketches and notes. But lucky for him, his wife Alena is an amateur numismatist (a person who studies and collects currency). She helped him fuse the coins together using silicate glue, which worked pretty well. Sergei said that using regular super glue could have resulted in oxidization, but this way the metal structure will last longer.
The couple worked for two to three hours a day, before and after work. The foundation was laid with 25 and 50 kopeck coins, the body was constructed with 1, 2, and 5 kopecks and the edges are decorated with 10 kopecks. The master deck is made of wood and the sides have openings for cannon shells. It took Sergei and Alena 6 months to collect enough coins and build the model.
The completed model ship is quite heavy at 30 pounds. The project cost them 800 hryvnia, and they are now planning to auction it off for 4,000 hryvnia. Sergei says that he plans to put his earnings into ‘new creative projects’.
Pretty impressive project, but I’m guessing it would have taken much less time to complete if he had just asked the Kopek Millionaire for a few of his 5 million coins.