Goblin Book Nook, Grinning Creature

NEIGHBOUR 004 is in the box, and only just.

One ear is already out

The body fills the box from top to bottom, but one ear has cleared it completely and hangs out over the shelf in open air, veined and thin enough to see the light through. Everything else is still inside. It is the half second before something leaves.

It is smiling, and that is worse

Not a roar and not a snarl. A wide, deliberate, full width grin with two rows of small sharp teeth in it and the eyes wide open above. Every printed monster in this category is mid attack. This one has decided something and is waiting for you to work out what.

There are two of them

Lower in the box, a clawed hand comes down over a second face, talons across its eyes. You do not see it in the first glance. Whether it is holding it down, hiding it, or protecting it is not our business, and the piece is better for not answering.

Bone white against matte black

The creature prints in soft bone and the box is flat black, so every wrinkle and every talon is drawn against its own background rather than disappearing into the bookcase behind it. The same reason a museum lays a specimen on dark cloth.

Where it belongs

A horror shelf. A folklore shelf. A study that likes being looked at slightly nervously. It is the one guests notice last and then cannot stop noticing.

Looking after it

That free ear and the talons are the fragile parts, and the ear has nothing underneath it. Lift it by the box, never by the ear. Dust with a soft dry brush rather than a cloth. Out of direct sun, because PLA softens around 60 degrees.

NEIGHBOUR 004

Printed and finished by hand in Australia, numbered once, and retired when the run ends.

It stands between the books

The box is about the width of a hardback, so it slots into a row on a shelf rather than sitting in front of one. It does not hold books up, and it is not meant to. It lives among them.

How it is made

Modelled from scratch, printed here on our own machines, then cleaned up, finished and packed by hand. Nothing is outsourced and nothing is cast, so every piece carries faint layer lines and no two come out quite identical. We could sand those out. We would rather you could see it was made than see it was manufactured.

PLA, which is a corn-starch derived plastic. It is rigid, it holds fine detail better than almost anything else at this price, and it has one weakness worth knowing: it softens at around 60 degrees. A sunny windowsill in February is the one place it should never live.

Ordering one now

Everything here is made to order. Nothing sits in a box waiting, which is why you are not paying for a warehouse. Order it and yours goes into the next batch, usually within a fortnight, and you are emailed when it goes on the bed and again when it ships.

Change your mind before it is printed and we refund it in full without asking why. After that you still have every right you have under Australian Consumer Law, which we cannot exclude and would not want to.