Press

A vase made from
the people in it.

Send a few photographs of people in profile, and their profiles become the outline of a vase. One face, or as many as six. No two are alike, because no two faces are.

Download the press kit nick@fahzface.com

Film by Tomasz Werner for Kickstarter, 2016. Made for the Design Museum’s Designer Maker User gallery, London.

Ten years apart

Two Kickstarters, one family.

In 2015 our kids were small and 965 backers funded the first Fahz. In 2026 they are grown, the printers are a print farm, and we went back to Kickstarter to see if the idea still held. 89 people backed it. That wasn’t enough to fund, so we opened the store ourselves, and every one of those backers gets the founding price.

2015

The original campaign. 965 backers.

2026

Fahz 2.0. 89 backers. It didn’t fund; the store opened anyway.

Why now

The printer was never the hard part.

In 2015 every profile was traced by hand, one order at a time, in the evenings, and two printers in a Brooklyn apartment made eight vases at a time, overnight. The vases were never the problem. Everything around them was.

In 2026 none of that lands on a person. You upload a photograph from your phone, and a few seconds later you are turning your own vase in 3D. Change who looks at whom as often as you like. When you order, the file goes straight to a print farm in the United States, and the vase arrives with a card that opens its digital twin.

	2015	2026
The profile	Traced by hand	Found by software in seconds
The design	Made for you	Made with you, on your phone
The printing	Two printers in an apartment	A print farm, made to order
The shipping	Nick, at the post office	Straight from the farm
Afterwards	A vase	A vase and its digital twin

The longer argument is in Lot Size One, an essay on what it actually costs to make one thing at a time.

The object

A vase generated
from profile photographs

Sizes and price

5 inch, $70
3 inch, $35

Made

To order, in the US,
about two weeks to the door

Available

fahzface.com,
from 16 November 2026

The object

Rubin’s vase, populated.

A Fahz is a vase generated from photographs of people in profile. Each profile becomes part of the vase’s own outline, so the object and the people are the same line.

Even numbers pair off and look at each other across the vase. Odd numbers don’t. Turn it, and each person arrives in turn. A small notch under the base marks where every profile sits.

Nobody needs it explained. People find it on their own, then turn it around and hand it to someone else so they can find it too.

Its history

Begun as a Mother’s Day present.

Rather than give his wife Martha a vase, Nicholas Desbiens wrote a program that generates them. He has said, more than once, that he could also have just bought a card.

The Kickstarter went up in January 2015 against a $10,000 goal. Between 2015 and 2018 more than a thousand vases were generated from strangers’ photographs, each one chosen and paid for by the person who received it. What stopped it was never demand or the software. It was everything after the printer: labels, padding, the drive to the post office, against a full-time job and two young children.

The first Fahz, 2015 to 2018

$61,102

raised on Kickstarter in 2015, against a $10,000 goal

965

backers in thirty days, 2015

600

vases ordered in the first ten days, 2015

1,000+

unique vases made and shipped, 2015 to 2018

Now the repetitive part runs on software he wrote for the purpose, and the vases are printed at a partner’s print farm in the United States. The design is still his, and he is still in Brooklyn.

The longer story, on the About page

Where it has been

Ten years, briefly.

2015BKLYN DESIGNS, Brooklyn’s design fair, in May. Inhabitat’s 2015 Green Awards, Editors’ Choice.
2015STORY, the Chelsea concept shop, invites Fahz into its Creativity edition. The fahz-o-matic runs live in the shop on 27 June.
2015Brooklyn-Made, certified Gold, by the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce. The subject of a master’s case study in mass customization at Politecnico di Milano.
2015Holiday gift guides: InStyle online, and Brooklyn Magazine’s 100 Brooklyn design objects.
2016Kickstarter asks Nicholas Desbiens twelve questions on the future of design, and films him and the vases for the Design Museum’s Designer Maker User gallery in London. The film is at the top of this page.
2017TODAY, 4 May. A vase made from the anchors’ own profiles, and Savannah Guthrie finds the faces on air.
2021Code as Creative Medium, by Golan Levin and Tega Brain, MIT Press. A Fahz is the full-page image that opens the book’s “Parametric Object” assignment.
2026Fahz 2.0 on Kickstarter in October, a Project We Love. 89 backers; it didn’t fund. Both campaign films are above.
2026Fahz reopens at fahzface.com on 16 November, ten years after the first run.

Kickstarter Project We Love

Also in Laughing Squid, New Atlas, 3D Printing Industry, 3DPrint.com, Daily Mail, Wired Italia, Der Standard, de Volkskrant, Inhabitat and InStyle.

Images

Free for editorial use.

Credit line: Courtesy of Fahz. Tap an image for the full-resolution file. The kit holds all of these, the turntable loops, the phone walkthrough, the original run and the marks, every file described.

A white and a black vase held in one hand — In the hand.

The card and the phone twin — Every vase arrives with a card that opens its digital twin.

The two sizes side by side — Five inch and three inch.

A grid of one hundred vases — One hundred vases from the first run.

A vase being printed — On the printer, 2015.

Nicholas Desbiens holding a vase — Nicholas Desbiens.

Download the press kit, 106 MB Browse every file

Facts

For the record.

Product: A vase generated from photographs of people in profile, made to order.
Sizes: Five inch and three inch. One to six faces on either.
Price: $70 and $35. Free shipping in the US. A second vase in the same order is 40% off.
Available: At fahzface.com from 16 November 2026. Made to order, about two weeks to the door. Order by 10 December for Christmas.
Fine-tuning: For anyone who wants more than upload and go, Fahz fine-tuning lets you reshape the vase yourself before it’s printed. It’s there from day one.
Material: PLA, a plant-derived plastic, in black or white.
Founded: Nicholas and Martha Desbiens, Brooklyn, New York, 2014.
Today: Nicholas Desbiens, architect and computational designer, Brooklyn. Printed by a partner print farm in the United States.
Further reading: Lot Size One, an essay on making one thing at a time 12 Questions on the Future of Design, Kickstarter, 2016 The 2015 Kickstarter campaign
Contact: nick@fahzface.com

On the house

For the press: make one yourself.

If you’re writing about Fahz for a publication, the best way to understand it is to make one. Write to me with where your piece will run and I’ll send you a code: upload a few profiles of people you love, shape the vase yourself, and it arrives at your door like anyone else’s. On me, of course.

Ask for a press code

A vase made fromthe people in it.