I started out with dropshipping. The plan: resell plant decor from China. It did not last long — I did not want to be a middleman. I wanted to make something that would not exist without me.

So I designed my first object of my own: a terracotta irrigation cone, for my plants. I taught myself FreeCAD. Then Blender, then OrcaSlicer, then materials — not in courses, but in years of test series and discarded attempts. Nora Blatt grew out of that.

Today vases are made here by 3D printing: from filament with real stone powder, from bio-based, stone-free biocomposites, from filament with real metal particles. What is in which piece, I state openly. I design myself, I calibrate the printers, I test materials, I work every surface individually after printing, I pack every object myself. Not out of nostalgia, but because that way I can stand behind every single piece.

I do not believe that technology and craft are opposites. I use software and AI to develop forms that could hardly be constructed by classical means. But no AI delivers a finished object. What it puts out is a raw state — which I work out at the computer until silhouette, proportion and detail are right. Only with material, surface and weight does it become something real. One without the other stays incomplete.

The design is head work at the computer. The printing is machine work. The finishing is handwork. All three stand side by side here.

Not one of them disguised as another.

I believe that materials should be allowed to age. Brass takes on patina. Iron rusts. That is not a fault — that is the lifetime of an object. I do not hide these changes. They are part of it.

I believe that honesty counts for more than smooth marketing. That is why I say openly how my work is made: which steps are digital, which are handwork — and where the limits of the material lie. Nothing about Nora Blatt should look artificial.

And I believe that good things take time. You do not understand a material in a weekend. An object is not made any faster just because the market is pressing.

I do not work along trends. Not because there is anything wrong with them — it simply is not how I work. I design for rooms where an object stands for years, not for the moment in which it is photographed.

What I will not go along with: letting a process disappear behind the word “handmade”, making a material sound better than it is, putting a story in front of the object. That is why I call my process by its name — 3D printing, with everything that still belongs to it afterwards. Anyone who works differently from me is not doing anything worse for it. I only want you to know exactly what you are holding when it comes from me.

And I do not make myself smaller than I am. I have worked with 3D printing for over ten years, most of it directly at the machines — through mistakes, through long nights, through results I would not let pass. That experience is in everything I design today. Which is why no object leaves the studio just because it is “good enough”.

A vase by Nora Blatt feels different from what you expect. You notice it in the weight. In the surface. In the moment you set it down — and it stands.

What interests me above all is how an object behaves in a real room: how it takes up light, how it changes. I do not want objects that withdraw from time. I want objects that get better with it.

Perhaps one day they will stand in rooms that do not yet exist.

Nora Blatt begins with vases — not because it is meant to stop there, but because every studio starts somewhere. My view goes beyond individual objects: to rooms, materials, atmospheres. In time furniture will follow, light, things that do not yet exist under this name.

Not as fast as possible, but step by step — with the same attitude the first pieces were made with. I do not want to grow faster than the quality allows.

What is made should be able to last.