The design team at L’OBJET worked on a series of shapes for scale and function, which the brothers used as canvases for their creative fantasies. 3D-printing enabled the designs to transport from the Brothers’ studio in LA to the L’OBJET porcelain atelier in Portugal. Together with Elad, the brothers flew to Portugal to manually work and sculpt each prototype by hand before molds were made ready for porcelain pouring. Beyond mere quality control, they needed to feel just right — something that had to be evaluated with eyes and fingers.

It is no exaggeration to call these pieces handcrafted, because every stage of every process involved the human touch. The tendency of technology to replace the beautiful inefficiencies of the human hand is a touchy subject that feels a little nostalgic. Here, L’OBJET and the Haas Brothers have mastered a balance of retaining the hand as the primary tool, while still using technology to support a complex and precise process. The machine has enabled the hand, not obscured it.