I’m not sure that the Pearl plate even exist outside of Scandinavia (please comment and clear this out for me) – but direct translation of the Swedish word ‘pärlplatta‘ would be pearl plate. The pearl plate was invented by a Swedish guy called Gunnar Knutsson 46 years ago and all Swedish children have made one or two of these in their lives. 3 years ago a Swedish company called Munkplast unveiled the product PhotoPearls (it was the first time I heard about them today though) and it’s basically a package containing a CD with a program that helps you create patterns, 15 000 plastic pearls in 30 different colors, and 4 transparent bricks (30 x 30 pearls) where you place all the pearls to create art. Above you can see Jesper Winberg from Munkplast showing off a Marilyn Monroe pearl plate.

The Windows software lets you upload a photo to create a pattern grid with the correct palette so you can start working with your pearl plate.

Here’s how a typical page looks like.

15 000 pearls in 30 different colors is the base of all pearl plates.

PhotoPearls latest product is the Idol package where you can build pearl plates of all the (Swedish) contestants from the show Idol.

On the trade show anyone could try out building a pearl plate.

And if you have the time and patience the end result could look like this.