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Title: Platonic Temari Balls
Artist and Designer: Carolyn Yackel
Materials: Styrofoam Balls, thread, and mercerized cotton
Technique: Embroidery

Artist’Äôs Description: This collection of temari balls exhibits the duality of the five Platonic solids. (For this, three balls suffice.) The following describes five of the balls: By looking at the center of a motif and examining the boundary between motifs, one can observe the face type of the Platonic solid that has been projected out onto the sphere. Count the motifs to verify that the solid has the correct number of sides. You may also check that the correct number of motifs meet at the corners of the boundary of the face. Now turn the ball slightly to focus on the star, which is created by the metallic thread on some of the balls and by mercerized cotton on others. Repeating the above process reveals that the solid corresponding to the star motifs is indeed the dual of the other platonic solid represented on the ball. Represented here are the cube and its dual, the octahedron (yellow, green balls), the self-dual tetrahedron (pink, blue balls) and the dodecahedron and its dual, the icosahedron (green, orange balls). The remaining ball represents a cuboctahedron, which is midway between the dual polyhedra cube and octahedron.