People imagine the studio as clean drawings turning smoothly into objects. It is mostly a bin of offcuts and a shelf of things that didn't work.
Acrylic melts if the laser lingers half a second too long. Brass warps if you cut the ribs too thin — the first Leaf Coaster had ribs so fine they bent when you picked them up. We thickened them twice before they earned a spot in the catalogue.
We keep the failures. Test 04, too red. Test 09, cracked at the corner. Test 14, right. It's the least glamorous shelf in the building and easily the most useful one.
Nothing here arrives fully formed. It arrives on the fourth try, usually, and only because we bothered to keep the first three.