When Germany’s Bettina Welker and Scotland’s Melanie Muir realized that they’d hit upon the same solution to a polymer connection problem, they got in touch with each other and had a good laugh.

No one would confuse Bettina’s latest Swiveling Neckpiece with this new Standing Stones piece by Melanie but if you deconstructed them, you’d see that the engineering is remarkably similar. They independently worked the connection conundrum out in the same way at the same time.

Swivels and rivets have been around for a long time, of course. This particular solution was a technique whose time had come.

Two takeaways here: you’re part of a community that can solve differences in a frank and cordial way, and sometimes a solution arises in several places at the same time. No harm, no foul.

We can also agree that flawless execution makes everyone take notice. We’ve been searching for ways to hide the distraction of hardware and both these artworks feature polymer beautifully all by itself.