Cone Series Stainless Steel is a minimalist vessel collection created by Munich and London-based interdisciplinary maker Hanna Fastrich for Slancha. Most modular object systems promise versatility through complexity – additional parts, specialized attachments, proprietary connections. Fastrich takes the opposite approach. The Cone Series reduces the vessel to two elemental geometries, a cone and a cylinder, and lets their interplay generate an entire taxonomy of use. A single conical form becomes a martini glass when seated on a tall cylindrical base, a serving bowl when paired with a wide low drum, or a standalone cup when resting on its own truncated tip. The cylindrical bases double as containers themselves, their top apertures serving as micro-vessels for salt or spice. Function here is not prescribed but discovered through arrangement.

Fastrich trained as an architect at the Architectural Association before shifting to applied arts at the Royal College of Art, studying ceramics and glass. That architectural sensibility – thinking in systems, in relationships between volumes and voids – carries through to the Cone Series in ways that distinguish it from decorative tableware. Each piece reads as a sectional study, a geometric primitive extracted from some larger spatial logic and given material weight on the tabletop. The cone itself is one of the oldest forms in vessel making, present in ancient Greek rhyta and Japanese sake cups, yet Fastrich strips it of ornamentation to foreground pure geometric tension between the expanding rim and the converging point.

The fabrication process reinforces this reductive clarity. Fastrich turns each cone and cylinder on a lathe from solid stainless steel, a technique more common in industrial machining than studio craft. The cylindrical bases receive their bottom plates through TIG welding, and the visible weld beads along the seams remain deliberately unpolished. These small puddles of fused metal, spaced evenly around each base like rivets on a ship hull, become the collection’s most telling detail. Where a luxury goods manufacturer would grind these marks away, Fastrich leaves them as honest records of the joining process. The brushed surface finish carries fine concentric lines from the lathe, catching light differently as the forms rotate in the hand. Subtle heat discoloration from welding blooms in amber and blue across the steel near the joints, adding warmth to what could otherwise feel clinical.