Both a tribute to ubiquitous, and lovely, hexagonal colour pencils, and a representation of what was coined by Joris Peels as 'combinatory manufacturing'.

Combine the connector piece with any set of 36 standard hexagonal pencils of about 7.0 mm cross section (measured at the smallest diameter). These types of sets are available around the world from many department stores and art supply stores - I’ve seen good sets for as little as 5 euro.

Examples of pencils that fit are Stabilo Aquacolor 1600, and Caran d’Ache Prismalo I, but there are many more. I’ve recently heard that in the US, Prismacolor Verithin Colored Pencils (available from Amazon and others) work well. Normal black pencils often have the same size and shape and can be used too.

If you are new to the Shapeways website: to order you will be asked to create an account (it's easy). Assembly may leave slight marks on pencils. For more information on this or other products, please visit www.michielcornelissen.com.

There are six regular convex polytopes in 4D, which are analogous to the five Platonic solids in 3D. This is the fifth, the hyperdodecahedron, a remarkably beautiful object brought to my attention by George Hart.

Here it's shown in a Schlegel diagram so you can see all 120 dodecahedral cells, though most are transformed by perspective: in this projection, the only regular dodecahedra are the biggest one on the outside and the tiniest one at the center.

A smaller model is here.