Designer Matthew Plummer-Fernandez has produced a unique tea set by scanning a non-matching cup, saucer, jug and pot, and printing them up in a 3D complete with the glitches that occur during the process...

Glitch Reality II comes out of Plummer-Fernandez's move towards working with 3D scanning and digital fabrication. He created the Apifera window display at Selfridges in London which we blogged about in 2008, and his latest work employs a Z Corporation 3D scanner to produce digital 'mesh' files of the objects, which are then "roughly repaired", he says. The files are then printed in 3D to create "an instance of this tea set data that inherits the glitches from the analogue-to-digital translation."

The result is something akin to a panel beaten Cubist tea set, with each object rendered in a "UV-curable photopolymer 'resin'," says the designer. Digital blueprints are currently available to buy from the Shapeways shop so the objects can be printed up in a range of suitable materials and finishes. (Though, Plummer-Fernandez warns, if produced as ceramics, the surface detail is lost when the objects are fired.)

"A third instalment of the Glitch Reality project [Vimeo version, here] uses parametric design software written in Processing to create a digital environment in which the 3D scans undergo further distortion," says Plummer-Fernandez, who studied MA Product Design at the Royal College of Art.

Glitch Reality II was commissioned by It's Nice That for a private collection. See plummerfernandez.com.

Initial R&D support: David Gardener
3D modelling for Shapeways version: Marcin Mazurski