The Taj Mahal, constructed with toothpicks by Stan Munro, will be on display at the Morris Museum through Aug. 31.
Can you build a replica of The Titanic? Well, you can if you use 10,000 of them, as Stan Munro proves in his exhibition “Toothpick World,” which is currently at the Morris Museum in Morris Township.
Using just toothpicks and Elmer’s glue — and occasionally, as in his Yankee Stadium, a little bit of color — he has assembled replicas of many world landmarks and historical vehicles. Joining The Titanic and Yankee Stadium in Morris Township are the White House, the Empire State Building, the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, the Arc de Triomphe, the Parthenon, Rome’s Colosseum, Moscow’s St. Basil’s Cathedral, Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose airplane, and more.
They are done at 1:164 scale, meaning that his Empire State Building, for instance, is 26″ by 16″ by 91.” But despite their small size, some of the grandeur of the originals still comes through, due to Munro’s skill.
Stan Munro’s toothpick Yankee Stadium is currently on display at the Morris Museum.
Munro, who lives in North Syracuse, N.Y. (and calls himself a “toothpick engineer”), is in the Guinness Book of World Records for tallest toothpick structure: His replica of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai is more than 16 feet tall.
“My first toothpick structure,” he writes on his web site, toothpickworld.com, “was in grade school when my art teacher asked us to make a 6-inch toothpick tower that would support the weight of an egg. Mine held that easily, then textbooks, finally a few kids flipped my desk over and lowered it onto my structure. It held. Everyone cheered. I was hooked.”
“Toothpick World” will be on display at the Morris Museum through Aug. 31; visit morrismuseum.org.
Here are two videos. The first shows many of his works (some but not all are on display in Morris Township), and in the second, he demonstrates his technique.
