Dezeen Magazine

Lukas Peet designs 3D-printed incense holder

Vancouver-based designer Lukas Peet has created a geometric incense holder-cum-ashtray using 3D printing technology.

Peet crafted the Scent Tray using direct metal laser sintering, which uses 3D-printing to form shapes from steel powder.

He wanted to create a product that would be made solely using this particular technology in order to showcase its capabilities while keeping a focus on the material itself.

"I challenged myself to create a seemingly simple yet refined – poetic and complex in some instances – object that would do justice to this amazing technology," he explained.

"It is an object that subtly attracts your attention with the mesmerising upward elegance of the smoke to the abrupt downward departure of the ash and the interaction of hiding the remains while looking different from every angle," explained Peet.

The product features a concave, disk-shaped tray with a partially hidden volume underneath.

The incense stick rests in a small round indent in one half of the disk, while the residue from the incense collects in the tray. The designer also sees the product doubling-up as an ashtray.

Peet made the Scent Tray by first manually shaping geometric forms using three-dimensional models.  This was done to avoid the "typical algorithmic forms" created by 3D-printing.

This also allowed the designer to create more complex configurations and combine organic curves with straight-lined geometric shapes.

The Scent Tray was designed to be printed and produced on demand in order to reduce waste – a model also adopted by Othr, which similarly produces on-demand 3D-printed products and partners with a range of designers to release two new on-demand homeware products each week.

Collaborations so far have included tableware designed by Phillippe Malouin and a birdfeeder created by Claesson Koivisto Rune.

Peet graduated from Design Academy Eindhoven in 2009. His previous projects have included a set of steel pendant lamps with a bulb in each end and a collection of curving cutlery comprising a silver fork and spoon and a ceramic knife.