The Spalla Merkaba
The BartStar built as a lattice of closely packed spheres, colored by mathematical law.
Starburst effect shown for illustration only, not included
with product. Spalla Merkaba enlarged to show detail.
Spalla Merkaba: BartStar in a Stargate/Portal
People come to the Spalla Merkaba for its beauty as a form; for its geometric precision, drawn from the Platonic solids; as an object that helps one raise consciousness; and as something to meditate on.
$99.99
Limited Edition: Nos. 9 to 99
Handcrafted, never mass-produced. Each of the first 99 is assembled by hand, then numbered, signed and dated by the artist, Barton James Christner. Be among the first to own one.
Custom-made to order. Please allow 2 to 3 weeks for shipment and delivery.
Beyond the facts
Seven people, one feeling underneath
A physicist, a historian, a meditator, a teacher, a giver of gifts, a designer, a seeker of mysteries. Each comes for a different reason. Each leaves with the same quiet certainty: the world has an order, it is beautiful, and you are part of it.
Rightness
Most beautiful things could have been otherwise. This one could not. That is the rare pleasure a collector knows at once: owning something exactly and finally right, and knowing you saw it before the world did.
Kinship
Leonardo held this shape in his mind. So did Kepler, and makers whose names are lost. To hold it is to join a very long conversation, and to feel the centuries close to the width of your hand.
Stillness
It asks nothing of you. It simply keeps its order while your mind slows down to meet it. The noise falls away, and there is the star, and there is your breath.
Wonder that makes sense
The best moment in learning is when the world turns out to be understandable. Count the spheres, find the axes, and the star answers back: yes, that is right. Beauty and truth were the same thing all along.
Being seen
A gift says: I know what moves you. When the glass is lifted there is a small intake of breath, and then the question every one of them asks: what is it? That question is where the conversation, and the memory, begins.
Satisfaction
No compromise, no arbitrary choice, nothing fudged to make it fit. Designers spend careers chasing the quiet thrill of a thing done properly. Here it is, whole, in the palm of your hand.
Awe
Some symbols travel. This one crossed oceans and centuries and kept its shape. To hold it is to feel a door left ajar: the sense that people long ago knew more than we assumed, and that there is more still to find.
One star, seven ways to see it
Discover the Spalla Merkaba
It is a lattice of 700 spheres. It is a form with a documented history. It is an object for meditation. It is geometry that can be taught. It is beautiful on a shelf. Begin where you are.
The Collector
An art object, placed sphere by sphere by law.
ForThe Historian
A form carried across civilizations, with its record.
ForThe Seeker
An object for meditation and awareness.
ForThe Teacher and Student
Geometry with a correct answer.
ForThe Gift
A small star of the heavens, in glass.
ForThe Designer
Eight colors, one law, no mirror image.
ForThe Mysteries
A symbol with a long and remarkable record.
How it feels
What order feels like
Hold it, and something in you settles. The eye goes looking for a mistake and never finds one. Turn it any way you like: every color is exactly where it belongs.
Green rises toward the sky. Magenta rests at the root. White catches the light at one tip, and black keeps the shadow at the other. It is the calm of a snowflake, a honeycomb, a pyramid of oranges at a market. Nobody chose seven hundred spheres. The order chose them.
- Green at the zenith
- Magenta at the nadir
- White at the upper tip
- Black at the opposite tip
- Red and cyan, blue and yellow, facing one another
Two founders
A historian and an artist
The Spalla Merkaba makes two claims at once: a mathematical claim about close packing, and a historical claim that the form has been carried across civilizations. No single person is the authority on both, so it has two founders.
Barton James Christner, M.F.A.
Designer and maker. He originated the form in the late 1980s and has refined it for thirty years.
Dr. Lawrence A. Spalla, Ph.D.
Historian, researcher and educator. He carries the history of the form and the Institute's research.
Spalla Merkaba contents
Works Cited
- Spalla Historical and Metaphysical Learning Institute, LLC, business plan v12.3, 2026.
- Andromeda Galaxy photograph: Adam Evans, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.