Our process is a mix of digital and hands-on play: fluid simulations, extruding slip, melting, cooling, eroding. We capture the interesting moments, 3D print them, and cast them in wax. We don’t always know what we’ll get, but the results tend to have a strangely satisfying resonance.
We’re drawn to the slow drama of physical processes: the way wax pools and drips, how caves build themselves grain by grain, the creep of glacier ice. When we stopped trying to force a shape and let it flow instead, those formations started appearing in our work.
Our candles freeze those moments so you can touch them, feel their curve in your hand, and eventually set them back in motion when you light them. They are made to melt, slump, and disappear in unpredictable ways. That unpredictability is part of it.
Each form has its own presence, some calm, some more energetic, and people often end up choosing the one that matches their own pace or the pace they need.
People see different things in them: a figure, a creature, a landscape. The forms stay open-ended. What you see is shaped as much by you as by the object itself. In that sense, they work like three-dimensional Rorschach tests.
1. Pulling References
We begin by collecting material behaviours, honey folding into itself, lava cooling at the edges, mud pools bubbling, surface tension doing strange things. Identifying behaviours that might translate into a solid form.
2. Setting Up the Simulation
Those references are fed into a 3D simulation setup. Instead of designing a shape, we adjust conditions: Should it spin as it drops, should the viscosity be unstable, should surface tension be pushed higher?
3. Choosing What’s Made
When a simulation looks promising, we check if it can actually be produced: Will it demold cleanly, are there undercuts that make it impossible, is the form structurally balanced enough to hold its shape. This is where digital experiments meet physical constraints.
4. Printing the Master
The approved form is printed in resin, layer by layer. We have worked through a few printers over the years, each one teaching us something different about what not to do. Once printed, the piece is sanded and refined. Whatever exists on this surface will be reproduced forever.
1. Making the Mold
A custom 3D printed mold box holds the master. Silicone gets poured around it. We have had leaks, blowouts, and batches of silicone that went straight onto the floor. It is more controlled now, but there is always some uncertainty.
2. Pouring the Wax
With the mold ready, wax is heated and the wick is threaded. The room stays at a stable temperature so the form sets cleanly. It is a simple step on paper, but wax has its own behaviour, and we adjust as we go.
3. Demolding
Demolding is tense for the first prototype, after that it is our favourite part. We peel the mold back slowly and hope the form releases in one piece. If it does, great. If it does not, we start again.
4. The Finished Object
Once a piece comes out clean, it is trimmed, checked, and refined. The wick is cut. The base is tidied. Then we run burn tests. That is the final step before it becomes a finished object.
About the Makers: Liz Wilson & Simon Oosterdijk
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What are you currently interested in, visually, materially, or conceptually?
Simon: Currently interested in archetypal forms or primordial shapes. Fundamental symbols that play out through all human expression. They might originate in some kind of anthropological or psychological basis. But they are pan geographical, omni cultural references that resonate through humanity. They are intrinsic to how we deal with objects and instill emotion and power into something inanimate.
Liz: Matrescence, and having some spare time.
What kinds of processes or behaviours do you trust more than design?
Simon: The back and forward between intention and not knowing. You start with a premise but then it needs to remain open ended. There needs to be room for chance and randomness to take you somewhere unexpected. So the process is creating a system of making that allows for the unknown to permeate.
Liz: Intuition, gut, and toddlers’ brutally honest opinions. If they want to grab it, that means it is good.
What do you find boring or irritating in design right now?
Simon: It is becoming even more self referential. It is about being a selector rather than an inventor. But with no risk, there can be no reward.
Liz: I have always felt this pressure that creative work has to come from deep, painful research and I just do not work like that. My sketchbooks are usually the worst biro scribbles or whatever crayon the kids left on the floor. I love images and collecting references, but the intuitive muck around play I actually enjoy never felt official. I read that Jung played with mud and sticks every day and honestly, that made way more sense to me than pretending I want to be some serious artist.
What are the small things you pay attention to in the studio?
Simon: Removing obstacles to flow. Everything needs its place in order to allow room for chaos.
Liz: Honestly, I am so time poor that I pay attention to nothing in the studio except the thing I am doing. I am unmotivated to clean up, or maybe I prioritise like a psycho.
What does good form mean to you?
Simon: I'm not sure I really see forms as binary good or bad, just a spectrum of interesting.
Liz: When a form has a soul and a personality.
What mistakes or accidents do you tend to keep rather than fix?
Simon: Depends on the context, but if I am surprised or amused, I might keep the accident.
Liz: my biggest successes have come from my biggest mistakes. I made a pot once that fell off the wheel during a stressful week in the fashion industry. It flew off the wheel and I looked at it and was like, damn that has got spirit.
It was the first time I understood the ceramics I love, the ones that have a soul.
Are there materials you return to because they behave in ways you like?
Simon: Beeswax has had a surprising hold on me. The smell, the colour, the feel of it as your hand warms it, all life affirming qualities I did not expect.
Liz: Clay, because it can exist in so many states, dust, gloop, brittle, cracked, soft.
I get why people stick with it for life.
And I am obsessed with factory videos, pasta being extruded, cakes getting machine iced on massive production lines. Love that stuff.
What do you want someone to feel when they pick up a Post Object?
Simon: A mixture of resonance, curiosity, and joy.
Liz: I want them to feel a spark, a magnetism, and for the object to give them something they need emotionally. Peace, vitality, or a reminder they are still creative, even if life is chaos. The forms are so open that they have room for whatever meaning someone brings. We have toddlers, so right now I am trying to find the zen radiance in soft toys and construction vehicles, but one day life will be more chill.
What is the part of making where you feel most at ease?
Simon: Probably the start, daydreaming, scribbling, sketching. The anything goes part.
Liz: When I am in flow. Working on the wheel helps quiet the internal dialogue a bit. I love pouring candles, trimming wax covered wicks with my ultra sharp scissors, and demoulding, especially beeswax. Touching beeswax feels healing. We should make our next drop in beeswax. Only problem is the bees try to break into the studio the moment I heat the vat, and then I have to rescue them from the spiders.
What part of the process is frustrating but also necessary?
Simon: The finalising, the defining, the archiving, the promotion.
Liz: Financials. And showing up on social media, but I have ripped the bandaid off. I am 42 and it is a lot seeing my face on a phone camera. Sometimes I watch DIY men giving absolutely no f**ks. It recalibrates me.
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