Danish/Australian Wedding Mosaic

May 8, 2004

Click thumbnail for larger picture.

The Danish Prince, His Royal Highness Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark married Miss Mary Elizabeth Donaldson of  Australia on May 14th. This model was Constructed for the party at the Danish Embassy in their honor.

WAMALUG agreed to construct a four foot square mosaic of the wedding couple out of LEGO brick for display at the Danish Embassy in Washington, D.C. The LEGO Company would donate the brick for the project and WAMALUG members would donate the manpower to design and build the mosaic.

A photo was digitized and converted into pixels suitable for building from multiple standard LEGO mosaic kits by Steven Barile using his own software program. The 9 separate panels were as assembled individually by WAMALUG members (Abe Friedman, Marian Hardy, Craig Hicks, Christina Hitchcock, and Margaret Keys) and joined and mounted by Rich Schamus. Christina Hitchcock transported the mosaic to the Danish Embassy where it was placed on display.

This was the first joint mosaic ever attempted by a gathering of WAMALUG members (although individual members have created their own mosaics). The finished mosaic was a complete success.

Interesting information:

• The mosaic is a picture of the Danish Prince and his fiancee
• It consists of nine 48x48 stud baseplates
• It measures 3 3/4 x 3 3/4 feet square
• It is made up of 20,736 plates (all 1x1 plates)
• There are five colors: black, white, and three shades of grey (old grey, not new grey).
• All 20,736 individual plates were placed with the word LEGO in the same orientation.
• Each one of the nine plates took between 3 and 4 hours to complete for a total of around 30 hours to assemble.
• The WAMALUG members who helped organize, generate, assemble and frame the mosaic were:
  • Abe Friedman
  • Marian Hardy
  • Craig Hicks
  • Christina Hitchcock
  • Margaret Keys
  • Rich Schamus
• The individual panel shown above is the lower left panel containing Miss Donaldson's dress.

Check out the official WAMALUG website that describes this event.

This is how the mosaic looked at the Royal Danish Embassy. It's a small picture but the only one I was able to find of the event showing the mosaic on display.