Santa Claus from Taiwanese miniaturist Chen Forng-shean: the smaller, the better

Most people like to think big. But Taiwan’s rare find Chen Forng-shean prefers to downsize everything, even setting records in creating miniatures barely seen by the naked eye over the years.

Miniaturist Chen recently worked on two very tiny Father Christmas figures of resin, rendering them to look very much like white-bearded Santa Claus in red outfits with black belts, matching red caps and black boots. They were incredibly small. In fact, Chen placed both on a pencil’s lead tip, which measured only 0.2 centimeter in diameter, to highlight their size. Both with average length, width and height of only 0.06 centimeter appeared to be jumping with joy in keeping with the Christmas holiday spirit.

The Xindian City-based Chen spent 30 days creating his smiling Santa Claus pair with bags of goodies intended to bring happiness to children in their grips. After 10 failed attempts to make what he had in mind, Chen finally finished creating the resin pair. Each was 0.05 centimeter long, 0.05 centimeter wide and 0.08 centimeter high. The works could only be seen clearly with the help of a powerful magnifying glass.

Giving each Santa Claus a jolly facial expression proved one of the biggest challenges encountered by Chen Forng-shean this time. Introducing the red color on the outfit was also very difficult. Only steady hands with full control over each brush stroke made possible Chen’s success in executing what he set out to accomplish.