The morphological structure of diatoms as an introduction to teaching metal pendants

Nature is a fertile source to stimulate the artist's imagination, from which he draws inspiration for his artistic vocabulary. We find in it many aesthetics, vocabulary and systems, some of which we can see with the naked eye and some of which are seen using magnifying microscopes. Diatoms are a type of algae that cannot be seen with the naked eye and have several forms exceeding two thousand species. They can be used to stimulate the design thinking of students. Their images and forms are diverse, whether in their artistic construction or their structural system. They carry various design elements in infinite images, relationships and artistic formulations. Some of them are symmetrical and some are built in different images, such as the branched form or what is organized in a radial manner, whether around an axis or around a center, and so on. Teaching metalwork, especially pendants, needs to be renewed, so the shapes of diatoms were introduced as a kind of intellectual stimulus for students to design metal pendants. Diatoms have many aesthetic forms that carry various superficial values. The research aims to study and analyze the morphological structure of diatoms and benefit from them as a new source for designing mineral pendants. The research was applied to fourth-year students of the old regulations system in the Metal Works 2 course, and a group of distinctive mineral pendants were made.