Designer
Benjamin Gintoki on the road to Nora Blatt, the studio, and the objects made there.
If you are reading this, you are looking for the person behind the brand. That is exactly how it should be.
My name is Benjamin Gintoki and I am the founder and designer of Nora Blatt. The vases are not thrown and they are not cast. They are printed. What the machine takes over, and what happens to the object afterwards — I name both.
The studio is in the south of Germany. I came here for work, shortly after my apprenticeship — more than twenty years ago now. It is not my home, it is where my workshop is. Not everything has to be made at the centre.
Professionally I come from industry. I work on highly automated production lines — mechanics, control systems, commissioning. Most of it I did not learn in a seminar room but at the machine. That shapes how I design: I measure, test and change until it is right. A vase has to stand securely, it has to have weight, the centre of gravity has to sit properly. That sounds sober, but it is exactly where the calm comes from that you can see in the finished object later.
Design has always occupied me, even without ever appearing on a certificate. Design, form, good clothes — I have an eye for it without having studied it. What interests me is not the name on the label: an old work jacket can mean more to me than luxury if form, material and attitude are right. Things you feel before you can explain them.
My first machine was an old Anet A8 — a 3D printer that teaches you the basics the hard way. That was over ten years ago. Today I work with more precise systems, but the most important lesson has stayed: a machine is only as good as the person who understands it. Everything in between — design, CAD, material behaviour, surface treatment — I taught myself.
Nora Blatt is the point where the two come together: the years at the machines and the eye for form. Here I develop my own designs, here I decide on silhouette, material and surface. That is the part of my work I built for myself — and the reason this brand exists.
How a vessel is made is set out in detail on the Material worlds page. In short: designed digitally, in part with the help of AI, then printed by the FDM process. What comes off the machine is a blank — no more. Every piece then passes individually through my hands: edges and transitions reworked, weighted, checked. That is where it is decided whether a piece goes out. Only what passes inspection gets its NFC chip and is packed.
Nora Blatt is made slowly. Layer by layer — and here that is not a metaphor. With time, with attention and without shortcuts. Every vase that leaves the studio has been in my hands beforehand.
— Benjamin Gintoki