For more than 25 years, Bridgeport, Conn., carpenter and remodeler Dalton Ghetti has been carving pencil lead into striking miniature sculptures, working mostly with razor blades and sewing needles, which he sometimes modifies on a sharpening stone to form tiny chisels or gouges. The work demands a light touch, a sharp eye, and lots of patience. The graceful one-piece chain pictured below, for example, took Ghetti about two years to complete. “I don’t work every day, and I can’t carve for more than an hour or an hour and a half at a time,” he says. “If I have a little bit of dust on the table at the end of that time and didn’t break anything, that was a good day.” — Jon Vara
