For the Love of God - Damien Hirst

It is entitled For the Love of God, apparently the exclamation

his mother gave upon hearing about the project.

The human skull, that of a mid-thirty-year-old man was not

merely encrusted with precious stones...

...but remade entirely. 32 platinum plates were made from its cast...

... before being hand-lasered with thousand of holes.

The diamonds were then set individually into each hole.

It took 8,601 flawless pavé diamonds to finish the piece.

'It's the maximum I can throw against death; perhaps that's crass,

to pit money against death, but it all depends on what it does visually,' says Hirst.

The original teeth were removed, 'lightly cleaned'...

...then embedded in the diamond and platinum mandibles.

The jaw was attached using platinum rods.

The large, pear-shaped diamond is light fancy pink, flawless

...surrounded by 14 graduated pear-shaped diamonds, all D-colour flawless.

So many diamonds were used for For the Love of God that it became difficult to source them on the world market, as the price rose.

The finished article.

pictures of the work's manufacture taken from Telegraph

View the entire collection of Damien Hirst - Beyond Belief exhibition

@ White Cube Mason's Yard & Hoston Square which ends on 7 July.

For the Love of God is only available at Mason's Yard.

*for some reason, blogger's line-spacing/font seem rather inconsistent (and I can't fix it)

so I hope it's not too uncomfortable for your eyes as they're quite annoying for mine. oh well...