Our models are conceived as scientific/didactical objects. Models of surfaces are helpful tools to better understand geometry at any level: concepts like mean and Gauss curvature, minimality, orientability, singularities, homotopy can be well explained by real objects. Using your hands and fingers to explore the objects, following paths, turning the object in our hands is an experience that goes further than the simple observation of a 3D model on a screen (which is also useful, of course). That's not all, though. We think that shapes arising from the world of mathematics have a beauty, a harmony that are somehow complete, total.
People who know very little of mathematics and geometry can look for several minutes at a model of Costa surface or Boy surface, wonder at their shape, simple and elusive at the same time. They are inspiring objects. Meditation objects. They remind us of something familiar: in fact, seashells have amazingly simple equations! Trees, ferns and cabbage grow with very basic algorithmic rules; sunflowers seeds are ordered according to logarithmic spirals and Fibonacci numbers. The link between Nature and Mathematics can be seen by everyone who has the patience of observing things, not only by mathematicians, physicists or biologists, but by poets too!
We strongly believe that our white mathematical sculptures bring the perfection of mathematics to the real world - perhaps the only world we can perceive and experience closely. They give us a taste of the ideal universe of abstraction. That's also the reason why we prefer to print them in white color: it highlights the centrality and the pureness of the shape, whereas colours might affect concentration and intuition. However, colors might be used to highlight some properties or features of the model and in that case we use them: truecolor models with all sorts of color blending are realized as easily as white ones. Scientists, architects, designers, but also people who simply love beautiful things will enjoy Mathshells.