An artist created the world’s smallest sculpture, only for it to be crushed by a wayward fingerprint.

Jonty Hurwitz, 45, created sculptures so small they can sit on a human hair or on the head of an ant but “freaked out” when he discovered a number of them had been squashed during the photography process.

Mr Hurwitz, who lives near Fernhurst, near Chichester makes the tiny figurines, which are less than a tenth of a millimetre tall, through a process called nano-printing.

They are too small to be seen with in the naked eye – and have to be viewed and photographed through a powerful microscope.

But one was crushed in the printing processs.

Some of his previous designs simply “collapsed” under the weight of gravity.

So the second generation of Mr Hurwitz’s sculptures created for the documentary feature more refined technology.

But Mr Hurwitz has moved on since the loss of the originals and will be featuring in a CNN documentary this week.

He said: “I went off to have the original photographed so I found a laboratory with an electron microscope and the photographic technology.

“The technician went to change the orientation and then for the next half an hour we were looking for the piece through the lens.

“Eventually I noticed there was a fingerprint exactly where the used to be and I was like ‘man you have just destroyed the smallest art pieces’ ever made – I slightly freaked out.

“I think there are two aspects to the whole thing – first there is the amazing mental and physical challenge and pushing limit to create something.

“There is something beautiful in challenging physics and what I am trying to communicate is this complete obsession and blind belief in the world of technology.

“This is totally about pushing all limits and its really interesting look at arbitrary categories – saying ‘that is not art’ and ‘that is not science’.

“This to some extent challenges that and is a multidisciplinary creative process.”

The sculptures are believed to be the smallest representation of the human form ever created by man.