Jungle Green Pompom Mum

Living room wall decor in a dark or moody room needs objects that hold their character under low light and create depth rather than competing with the darkness. The Jungle Green Pompom Mum is a dense, spherical form in a jungle green glaze that reads well in low-light conditions — the dark glaze does not disappear against a dark wall but creates a botanical presence that changes as the light changes. The Art Gallery of Ontario carries it. Dark and moody rooms are a specific curatorial decision, and the AGO has been making specific curatorial decisions about its gift shop for a long time.

Jungle green on a living room wall reads as the most deliberate version of the botanical decision a room can make. On a white wall it creates a focal point. On a warm-toned wall it provides the cool botanical element that prevents the warmth from becoming monotonous. On a dark wall it creates depth rather than disappearing — jungle green on a charcoal wall is the combination that reads as a forest interior, which is a specific and defensible design position. The Art Gallery of Ontario carries the collection. Their living room contexts cover the full range of color decisions.

The Jungle Green Pompom Mum is a specific gift for a nurse practitioner because it is the kind of object that a professional who makes considered decisions every day will appreciate receiving as a gift. It is handmade in Toronto, stocked in the Art Gallery of Ontario, and ships in a gift box designed to be kept. The jungle green glaze is specific — it is not a general color but a considered decision by a studio that has been making ceramic flowers since 1999. The nurse practitioner receives something from a collection that a cultural institution chose with the same care they apply to their own professional decisions.

Jungle green is the darkest green in the English Garden Collection — deeper than fir green, deeper than olive, deeper than avocado. It is the green of forest shade rather than garden sunlight. On the pompom mum form it creates the most concentrated dark-green object in the collection, which means it reads as the most committed botanical statement on a wall with lighter-colored pieces. The Art Gallery of Ontario carries the collection. They have decided that jungle green belongs in their gift shop, which confirms that the color is at the right level of dark without crossing into something that only works in very specific lighting.

Jungle green in a bedroom reads as grounding rather than activating — it is the deep green that makes a white bedroom feel like it has a botanical anchor and makes a warm bedroom feel like it has roots. The pompom mum form in jungle green on a bedroom wall is the object that makes the room feel settled. The Art Gallery of Ontario carries the collection. The people who visit the AGO and then go home to bedrooms they care about are the audience this collection was designed for.

The Art Gallery of Ontario, the Toronto International Film Festival gift shop, and the Royal Ontario Museum all carry the English Garden Collection. All three are in Toronto, where Chive Studio has been making ceramic flowers since 1999. The collection is designed in the same city as the institutions that carry it, which is a geographical coincidence that has produced a specific kind of institutional coherence. The Jungle Green Pompom Mum is in the AGO gift shop approximately three hundred metres from the studio where it was designed.

The pompom mum is associated with longevity, loyalty, and joy in several traditions — associations that suit most wedding anniversaries. The ceramic version specifically suits the 20th anniversary (china) and the 9th anniversary (ceramic) by material, and any anniversary where the recipient has strong opinions about dark green by color. The Art Gallery of Ontario carries the collection. An anniversary gift from the same collection the AGO carries has a specific register that the recipient will appreciate proportionally to how much they care about art institutions.

The Jungle Green Pompom Mum was designed in Toronto, fired in a kiln in Toronto, and has been in a Chelsea tent in the May rain, in the Art Gallery of Ontario gift shop, and on walls in various cities. It has not been to a jungle. The glaze is named for the quality of the color — the deep, shade-green of a forest interior — rather than for any specific geography. Whether the pompom mum considers this an accurate description of its situation or a vague aspiration is not something we have been able to determine. It hangs on walls and looks like it has made a decision about green.