PORCELAINia
PRECESSIA
Precessia is the first family of Archimedean Polyhedrals in porcelain. Keith Critchlow coined the term "polyhedrals" to refer to the spherical version of the regular and semi-regular polyhedra. In the same way that Buckminster Fuller turned solid polyhedra into dynamic vector systems, Keith Critchlow put forth the first true understanding of the spherical nature of the polyhedra and diagrammed for the first time the closest packing arrangements of them in 1969. He worked with Buckminster Fuller during that time and helped Fuller articulate some of his key concepts of his synergetic geometry that later became part of his two-volumn magnum opus, Synergetics, which was written by Fuller and his collaborator, E.J. Applewhite.
The thirteen (fifteen if we count the two chiral "twins" of the snub cube and snub dodecahedron) Archimedean solids are named after Archimedes, who was thought to have discovered them in the 4th century BC. They are attributed to Archimedes for the first time in the fifth book of the "Collection" of Greek mathematician Pappus from the fourth century AD. While Critchlow has shown convincing evidence that they have been known since neolithic times, the five Platonic solids, first articulated in Plato's Timaeus, were the only solid geometries with regular symmetry exhibiting similar polygonal faces and able to circumscribed the sphere. Plato considered them the archetypal forms of universe and identified them with the physical world: the earth-cube, fire-tetrahedron, air-octahedron, water-icosahedron, and (universe-dodecahedron). Like the archetypal Platonic solids, the Archimedean Solids also circumscribe the sphere, and have semi-regular symmetry, but they also exhibit more than one type of polygonal face and are created by truncating the edges of the Platonic Solids. Could there be a clear archetypal significance of the Archimedeans? Has anyone yet articulated that? In Critchlow's "Order in Space" the Archimedeans are layed out in the 12 around one configuration for the first time. While Fuller and Kepler before him used 12 around one spheres to define the close-packing of the cuboctahedron or vector equilibrium, Critchlow took that one step further to define the organization of the two and fourfold symmetrical archimedeans as the first six around and the fivefold symmetrical Archimedeans in the outer six.
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