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        Often placed in the eye of a needle, handmade sculptures by miniaturist Willard Wigan sell for tens of thousands of pounds. His jewelry belonged to Sir Elton John, Sir Simon Cowell and the Queen. They are so small that they come to the full stop at the end of this sentence. In some cases, there is freedom of action.
       He managed to balance the skateboarder on the tip of his eyelashes and carve a church out of a grain of sand.
       So it’s no surprise that the hands and eyes behind his unique skills are insured for £30 million.
        “The surgeon told me that I could do supervised microsurgery,” said Wigan, 64, from Wolverhampton. “They said that I could work in medicine because of my dexterity. I was always asked, “Do you know what you can do in surgery?” he laughs. “I’m not a surgeon.”
       Wigan recreates scenes from history, culture, or folklore, including the Moon landing, Last Supper, and Mount Rushmore, which he cuts from a small fragment of a dinner plate he accidentally dropped.
        “I stuck it in the eye of a needle and broke it,” he said. “I use diamond tools and use my pulse as a jackhammer.” It took him ten weeks.
       When not using his pulse to power the makeshift jackhammer, he works between heartbeats to stay as still as possible.
        All of his tools are handmade. In a process that seems as miraculous as alchemy, he attaches tiny diamond shards to hypodermic needles to carve his creations.
        In his hands, eyelashes become brushes, and curved acupuncture needles become hooks. He makes tweezers by dividing the dog hair into two parts. As we chatted via Zoom, he sat in his studio with his microscope on display as a trophy and talked about his latest sculpture for the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.
       “It will be massive, all in 24 carat gold,” he said, sharing the details EXCLUSIVELY with Daily Express readers before wrapping up.
        “There will be statues of a javelin thrower, a wheelchair racer and a boxer. If I can find weightlifters there, I will find them. They are all made of gold because they strive for gold. Point of Glory.
        Wigan already holds two Guinness World Records for the smallest work of art, breaking its own in 2017 with a human embryo made from carpet fibers. Its size is 0.078 mm.
        The prototype of this statue was the bronze giant Talos from Jason and the Argonauts. “It will challenge the minds of the people and make them
        He works on ten jobs at a time and works 16 hours a day. He compares it to an obsession. “When I do this, my work does not belong to me, but to the person who sees it,” he said.
        To understand his obsessive perfectionism, it’s helpful to know that Wigan suffers from dyslexia and autism, two disorders that weren’t diagnosed until adulthood. He said that going to school was torture because the teachers made fun of him every day.
        “Some of them want to use you as a loser, almost like a showpiece. This is humiliation,” he said.
       From the age of five, he was taken around the classroom and ordered to show his notebooks to other students as a sign of failure.
        “The teachers said, ‘Look at Willard, look at how badly he writes.’ Once you hear that it was a traumatic experience, you are no more because you are no longer accepted,” he said. Racism is also rampant.
        Eventually, he stopped talking and only showed up physically. Away from this world, he found a small ant nestled behind his garden shed, where his dog had destroyed an anthill.
       Worried that the ants would be homeless, he decided to build a house for them out of furniture he made from wood shavings that he carved with his father’s razor blades.
       When his mother saw what he was doing, she told him, “If you make them smaller, your name will become bigger.”
        He got his first microscope when he left school at 15 and worked in a factory until his breakthrough. His mother died in 1995, but her fierce love remains a constant reminder of how far he has come.
        “If my mother were alive today, she would say that my work is not small enough,” he laughs. His extraordinary life and talents will be the subject of a three-part Netflix series.
        “They talked to Idris [Elba],” Wigan said. “He’s going to do it, but there’s something about him. I never wanted a drama about me, but I thought, if it’s inspiring, why not?”
        He never attracts attention. “My glory has come,” he said. “People started talking about me, it was all word of mouth.”
        His biggest compliment comes from the Queen when he created a 24-carat gold coronation tiara for her diamond jubilee in 2012. He cut the Quality Street purple velvet wrap and covered it with diamonds to mimic sapphires, emeralds and rubies.
        He was invited to Buckingham Palace to present a crown on a pin in a transparent case to the queen, who was amazed. “She said, ‘My God! It’s hard for me to understand how one person can do something so small. How do you do it?
        “She said: “This is the most beautiful gift. I have never come across something so small but so significant. Thank you very much”. I said, “Whatever you do, don’t wear it!”
        The queen smiled. “She told me she would cherish it and keep it in her private office.” Wigan, who received her MBE in 2007, was too busy this year to make another one to mark her platinum anniversary.
       In the spring, he will appear as a judge on Channel 4′s Big and Small Design series hosted by Sandy Toksvig, in which contestants compete to renovate dollhouses.
        “I am someone who pays attention to every detail,” he said. “I love it, but it’s difficult because they’re all so talented.”
        He now uses the OPPO Find X3 Pro, which is said to be the only smartphone in the world capable of capturing the finest details of his work. “I’ve never had a phone that could capture my work like that,” he said. “It’s almost like a microscope.”
        The camera’s unique microlenses can magnify the image up to 60 times. “It made me realize how a camera can bring what you’re doing to life and let people see the details at the molecular level,” Wigan added.
       Anything that helps is welcome as he has to deal with issues that traditional artists never have to deal with.
       He accidentally swallowed several figurines, including Alice from Alice in Wonderland, which was placed on top of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party sculpture.
        On another occasion, a fly flew past his cell and “blew away his sculpture” with a flap of its wings. When he gets tired, he tends to make mistakes. Incredibly, he never gets angry and instead focuses on making a better version of himself.
       His most intricate sculpture is his proudest achievement: a 24-karat gold Chinese dragon whose keel, claws, horns and teeth are carved into its mouth after it has drilled tiny holes.
        “When you’re working on something like that, it’s like a Tiddlywinks game because things keep jumping around,” he explains. “There were times when I wanted to give up.”
        He spent five months working 16-18 hour days. One day, a blood vessel in his eye burst from stress.
       His most expensive work was bought by a private buyer for £170,000, but he says his work has never been about money.
        He loves to prove skeptics wrong, like Mount Rushmore when someone tells him it’s impossible. His parents told him that he was an inspiration to children with autism.
        “My work has taught people a lesson,” he said. “I want people to see their lives differently through my work. I’m inspired by underestimation.”
        He borrowed a phrase that his mother used to say. “She would say that there are diamonds in the trash can, which means that people who have never had the opportunity to share the extreme powers they have are being thrown away.
        “But when you open the lid and see a diamond in it, that’s autism. My advice to everyone: whatever you think is good is not good enough,” he said.
       For more information about OPPO Find X3 Pro, please visit oppo.com/uk/smartphones/series-find-x/find-x3-pro/.
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