Every piece in this collection comes out of the machine the same color: a matte, slightly granular bone white. Whatever color it ends up, it did not start that way.
Finished pieces go into a heated bath of dye. The nylon draws the color into itself over time, much the way a natural fiber takes dye — the heat opens the material's structure enough for the dye to move into it, and it closes around it as the piece cools.
This is a different thing from painting or plating, and the difference is the whole point.
Worth being precise about, because it is routinely overstated.
The dye penetrates the surface — comfortably further than ordinary wear will ever reach — but it does not travel all the way to the middle. Cut one of these pieces in half and you would find white nylon at the center.
So "dyed through" would be an overstatement. What is true is that there is no layer: no film of paint, no plated skin, nothing with an edge that can lift, chip, flake or wear away to reveal something different underneath. The color is part of the surface rather than something applied to it.
The practical difference shows up at edges and high points — exactly where a coated finish fails first, and where a dyed one simply doesn't.
Because of where the liquid can reach.
Many of these forms are open — lattices, hollow interiors, deep recesses that exist precisely because the printing process allows them. A spray gun coats what it can see. Dye goes wherever liquid goes, which is everywhere.
The inside of an open form is the same color as the outside. On a piece built around what its interior does, that matters more than it sounds.
Slowly, and only with sustained ultraviolet exposure. Dyed nylon behaves like most dyed materials: a season on a sunny windowsill will shift the tone, whereas being worn in the sun will not. Normal wear, water, and time in a drawer do nothing to it.
Since color is added after printing rather than being a property of the material, one form can exist in any number of colors without reprinting or retooling anything. The geometry is one decision and the color is another, made later and independently.
It is a small thing that quietly shapes the collection: a form that works can be explored across a whole range rather than committed to a single finish.
See how these pieces are made, or browse the 3D printed collection.
All of these are collected on the 3D printed jewelry page.
