Using Botox, beta-blockers and the stillness of the night, Graham Short produces miniature engravings like nobody else. Often dubbed “the world’s smallest engraver”, he hand-carves phrases and symbols onto the tiniest of surfaces, from pinheads to the edge of a razor blade. Selling for increasingly large sums, the master craftsman goes to “ridiculous lengths” to achieve the required precision. Short takes beta-blockers to slow his heartbeat to get the steadiest possible hand, and injects his eyelids with Botox to relax their muscles. The 72-year-old works from midnight to dawn to minimise vibrations from outside. “I know it’s a bit extreme… I’m so obsessed with it,” he told AFP at his home-studio in the suburbs of Birmingham, central England. “I don’t think anybody else would go to these lengths.” He claims he’s the only person doing miniature engraving and says “that’s what drives me on.” Once complete, often after months of work, his pieces are displayed in a lit case under a microscope, illuminating intricacies invisible to the naked eye. They are typically bought by art investors with one piece, a collection of works fusing English, Arabic and calligraphy, fetching £200,000 (223,00 euros, $254,000). He sold an engraving of Queen Elizabeth II’s head on a piece of gold lodged in the eye of a needle to a Scottish dairy farmer for £100,000. He also engraved “nothing is impossible” on the sharp edge of a razor blade, which sold for £50,000 to a gallery in northern England. Published in Daily Times, August 21st 2018.