Whirling Dervish

A spinning top inspired by the Sufi dancers of Turkey

2014

Industrial Design

 About

A children's toy born out of a sketching exercise during my undergraduate studies. The whirling dervish dancers of Turkey have a distinctive silhouette, the wide, spinning skirt, that immediately suggested the form of a traditional spinning top. I wanted to see how directly that translation could be made.

Reference - Top

Reference - Dervish Dancer

Design Process

The idea started as a quick sketch, followed by reference gathering on both spinning top forms and the visual language of the dancers.

Sketch

The sketch was refined in Photoshop, then modelled in Rhino and rendered in Keyshot.

Dimensions