Latte Empress Lotus

One screw only. No adhesive, nothing that peels off when the temperature changes. A single small screw goes into the wall, the keyhole slot on the back of the Latte Empress Lotus drops onto it, and that is the complete installation. It has been one screw and we see no reason to complicate it.

Gift for interior designer is a category where the gift needs to be specific enough to communicate genuine attention to the recipient's aesthetic sensibility. The Latte Empress Lotus is the Japan Collection piece most often chosen for interior designers, because it operates from the same principles an interior designer works from: a neutral that has thought carefully about itself, a form that is historically informed, a color decision that reads as considered rather than convenient.

A gift for an architecture lover is a gift for someone whose attention to the built environment extends to the objects within it. The Latte Empress Lotus is a ceramic object whose form decisions are as considered as any architectural detail -- the lotus form has been refined over centuries of decorative and symbolic use, and the latte glaze sits against architectural materials -- concrete, plaster, natural stone -- with the same ease as a well-chosen material.

Bathroom wall decor in a neutral palette -- tile that has moved toward linen or plaster or warm white -- is where the Latte Empress Lotus finds the most immediate agreement between what the room already is and what the Lotus proposes. The latte glaze sits with warm neutrals without requiring the wall to adjust to the flower.

Earthy home decor -- terracotta, linen, natural wood, raw plaster -- is where the Latte Empress Lotus finds its most immediate context. The latte glaze is warm enough to belong in that palette without competing with the natural materials that define it. The lotus form is botanical and considered. Together they produce a piece that reads as part of the room rather than an addition to it.

It does. Every Latte Empress Lotus ships in a Chive gift box -- no additional wrapping required on your part. The box is designed to arrive intact and to look like something worth opening. We have been shipping ceramic flowers and the packaging has improved considerably since the early days, which we prefer not to discuss in detail.

The Latte Empress Lotus is aware of this in the way the lotus is aware of most things -- which is to say, the lotus is aware but has decided that awareness does not require a response. Four thousand years of symbolising enlightenment produces a certain equanimity about the arrival of a twenty-five-year-old foam-related color descriptor. The lotus has been through Egyptian hieroglyphics, Buddhist temple frescos, and the courts of at least a dozen dynasties that no longer exist for reasons the lotus did not get involved in. Latte was not the most surprising thing that happened to the lotus. It was not even in the top fifty.

Indefinitely, with no maintenance required. The Latte Empress Lotus is ceramic -- the glaze is permanent, the form does not change, and it does not respond to seasons, light levels, watering schedules, or the general passage of time. We have flowers from the early 2000s still on the walls of people who bought them when they moved into apartments they have since left, taken the flower with them, and hung it in the next place. Ceramic does not negotiate with time.