The Coastal Collection. Ivory, White, and The Specific Calm of a Wall that has Made a Decision.
The Coastal Collection is the Chive range for people who have decided that their wall will be calm. Twenty-five handmade ceramic wall flowers in ivory, cream, and blue-white glazes — the tones of a coast, a linen wall, a room that has resolved the color question and moved on. Handmade in Toronto since 1999. Featured in House Beautiful and Dwell. On walls in SFMOMA, Denver Botanic Gardens, and the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Handmade. Without molds. Twenty-five years of it.
A mold is, in the ceramics world, a perfectly reasonable thing to use. It is faster. It is more consistent. It produces flowers that are, objectively, more like each other than likeanything that was made by a human being paying attention. We have never used one. This is not a moral position — we are not the kind of company that makes a character out of its process — it is simply what we have always done, and after 25 years, the results have compounded in ways that are difficult to explain and obvious to hold in your hands.
Each petal in each flower was shaped by a person. The slight asymmetry you may notice in the curve of a primrose petal or the angle at which a narcissus droops is not a defect. It is the record of the hand that made it, which is the thing that makes it worth having. We are not in the business of manufacturing something. We are in the business of making something, which is different, and which has always been the point.
One screw. No second hole.
On the back of every flower is a keyhole — a slot designed to slide over the head of a screw that is already in your wall. You drive one small screw. You slide the flower over it. You take a step back. The installation is complete. It took less time than the decision about where to hang it, and considerably less time than any home improvement project you have undertaken in the last five years.
If you want to hang multiple flowers — which most people do, eventually, because it turns out that one ceramic flower is less a destination than a beginning — the process is the same for each. One screw each. The arrangement grows in the direction you want it to grow. We have customers with walls of fifty-two. They do not regret this.
Always original, often copied. The story behind the tagline
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Handmade is one of those words that has been used so many times it has lost most of its meaning. Chive Studio has been making ceramic flowers in Toronto without molds since 1999...
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How Chive got into the Getty Museum
The short version is that we made something good and kept making it better for twenty-five years. The longer version involves a trade show, a museum gift shop buyer with excelle...
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