a study in sweet, crumbling type

GRANULAR GLYPHS

Granular Glyphs traces the movement of language through sugar's material history. The word — from Arabic — travelled with the commodity itself, carried by trade, migration, and exchange.
Sugar was once a symbol of wealth, sculpted elaborately for the affluent. Now it is an everyday staple. By building the word from sugar, the work binds together these parallel histories: transformation, circulation, translation.

سُكَّر ·شکر ·σάκχαρον ·zúcar ·sucre ·zucchero ·azúcar ·sugar ·砂糖 ·cukor ·şeker ·цукор ·سُكَّر ·شکر ·σάκχαρον ·zúcar ·sucre ·zucchero ·azúcar ·sugar ·砂糖 ·cukor ·şeker ·цукор ·

from Sanskrit śarkarā — "gravel, ground sugar" — to Arabic سُكَّر, then onward through every trade route.

the final piece ✶

Sugar sculpture spelling SUGAR in english — sugar — english

Sugar sculpture spelling sugar in arabic — سكر — arabic

the process ✎

Rhino model of the SUGAR letterforms — modelling in rhino ✎

← every glyph, modelled by hand

The book

Borrowed Words — book cover, a yellow hardcover wrapped with a metallic ribbed band

THIS ISN'T THE ONLY TIME SUGAR HAS MADE A FEATURE IN MY WORK

Borrowed Words is a bidirectional flip book tracing shared Arabic and English words through their visual transformations. As forms shift across pages, the book reveals the histories of migration, trade, and cultural exchange embedded within language.

Pick it up one way for English words borrowed from Arabic · flip it over for Arabic words borrowed from English

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