I have been interested in the linguistic possibilities of the periodic table since I was a child.

This is therefore an ongoing project based partially on my own history and on some ideas developed at 100% Design in 2005. I created a foldable table (as part of research into postable objects) which became a wall print. It was only therefore a table ‘periodically’.

In 2012 I met Dr. Edward Gomez, an astrophysicist at the Hay Festival. I discussed the idea of creating word-play and linguistic exercises using the Periodic Table abbreviations. He wrote initial software to explore this idea. This has lead to a number of experiments:

• A real board game – Elemensus
• Limited editions prints of people for We’re All Made of Stars [LINK]
• A Th-Es-Au-Ru-S/lexicon exploring the poetry of these words. I printed a 24 pp sampler for this in 2012
• A unique poem of Creation using only words created from Chemistry abbreviations
• A new typeface based on the Periodic Table of Chemistry abbreviations.

Future possible developments include collaborative poetry online when the database and interface are developed. All self-funded.