What the vessels are made of, and how they come about.
Nine colorways in two lines. Stone holds its colour for years, Metal changes over time. None is painted, none is coated — the colour sits in the material.
The brand is young. The experience behind it is not: Benjamin Gintoki has been printing for over ten years, from the first kit printer to today's small series.
Five colorways from mineral and plant-based materials.
Two of the five contain real stone powder in the filament. That changes the surface noticeably: it becomes smoother and markedly less glossy than with common print materials — the light does not break on it but settles onto the surface. The other three come from bio-composites; their colour sits in the material just as firmly, but it is not carried by stone.
Neutral grey with real stone powder in the filament. Very light, without gloss, smooth in the hand. No speckled pattern, despite what the name suggests — the stone content works through the surface, not through markings.
Grey with a warm undertone, likewise with real stone powder. The colour travels with the daylight: cooler in the morning, distinctly earthier in the evening.
An earthy, fired brown. Not red, not terracotta orange — closer to dark loam after rain than to a brick in the sun.
A light, speckled grey with fine dark points across the surface — unlike Granite, this one really does carry the porous, restless look the name Pumice promises. The lightest of the three colorways without stone powder, with noticeably more structure than smoothness.
A deep, muted green with a grey component. The most colourful of the Stone colorways, but a long way from a signal green — it reads as dark stone tipping into green.
Four colorways with real metal particles in the body.
The filament contains finely ground metal that stays in the printed piece. The pieces are therefore heavier than comparable materials, cooler to the touch, and metallic to the eye — not painted to look metallic.
No Metal piece leaves us the way it comes off the printer. Every surface is treated until the metal in the material shows — as patina on Brass, Bronze and Copper, as rust on Iron. Every surface takes the treatment differently, which is why no piece looks like the next.
Nothing is sealed. The surfaces are allowed to keep working and change over months.
Iron particles in the filament. A magnet sticks to it, and the piece weighs about one and a half times a comparable body in plain PLA.
Iron is the only colorway that ends in rust rather than patina. It is set deliberately before shipping and keeps working afterwards — the surface darkens over months.
A light, warm brass tone. Clear and yellowish when freshly worked, calmer and deeper with time — brass darkens, and that is the material's normal state, not a defect.
Around 80 % real metal particles. A dark tone with a reddish base that catches lighter on the edges than on the surfaces. The surfaces grow deeper and calmer with time.
Likewise around 80 % metal content. The warmest of the four. It changes the most visibly of them: the surface darkens while the edges stay lighter.
The design is developed on the computer and reworked until wall thicknesses, transitions and footprint fit together. Forms like these cannot be made conventionally: doubly curved walls and undercut edges come off no wheel and out of no two-part mould.
Printing runs at 0.25 mm layer height with a hardened nozzle — ordinary nozzles are worn away by stone and metal particles within a few spools.
The body is built from several perimeters, not in spiral mode. That takes longer but produces a real, consistently even wall thickness instead of a single wound-up path.
Every layer stays visible. Up close you see the individual passes; from two metres away, a continuous texture running around the whole body.
Not every form runs at the same layer height. On strongly curved bodies it shifts with the angle of the wall — finer where the wall runs out flat, coarser where it is steep. That keeps the surface even across the whole form instead of stepping at the poles.
Deburring, brushing, checking. Nothing is sealed, nothing is overpainted, nothing is polished.
That is a decision, not an omission: a layer of clear lacquer would seal off the metal particles and prevent the change in the surface that makes these materials interesting.
A permanently fitted glass takes the water, a steel core gives weight and stand, and a base of Merino wool felt protects the surface it stands on. In NYX an NFC chip sits in the base, leading to the digital certificate page for that particular piece.
The process is not new. What can be built with it is.
Filaments with real stone and metal content were long impractical to work with — they clogged nozzles, cracked as they cooled, would not layer cleanly. Only in the last few years have materials and machines come far enough for this to be a series rather than a one-off experiment.
Behind Nora Blatt stands Benjamin Gintoki. He has worked with this kind of production for over ten years, from the first kit printer to today's series.
Wipe dry, no harsh cleaners, not in the dishwasher. The glass inside takes the water — the body never comes into contact with it.
On Metal, fingerprints on fresh surfaces are normal and disappear over time.
Do not rub Iron dry — the layer of rust is part of the surface.
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