Imperial Glass Boho Flower Vase

Colour that works when the vessel is empty, which is most of the year in most houses. Amber under a matte surface stays warm even in flat winter light, so the object holds a shelf on its own without a flower propping it up. Put stems in and they stand in front of a tone instead of in front of nothing. Useful here means it earns the space unoccupied.

Five to seven of something slender, or three with real substance to them. The opening is generous enough that one lone stem falls to the side and looks like an oversight, so this is not a bud vase and does not reward being treated as one. Cornflower, freesia, scabiosa and salvia all sit well as a loose handful. A trio of snapdragons also works. Anything heavy leans.

On an ordinary bookshelf, comfortably. On a narrow picture ledge it depends on the ledge, and we would sooner admit that than publish a figure nobody here has measured. This is a shelf-scale object and not a floor-scale one: taller than a mug, nowhere near what anyone would call a floor vase, and steady on a flat surface. Hold a hand against the photograph. That is roughly right.

It shows fingerprints, and pretending otherwise would be silly, because a matte face holds the oil off a hand where a polished one sheds it. Scratching is a separate question. Nothing sits on top of this surface, so there is no layer to scuff through and no finish that can wear away in patches. The only thing that marks it is a warm hand. A dry cloth answers that.

Tepid water, a soft cloth, nothing gritty and nothing containing bleach. The matte texture is the glass surface itself and not a film laid over it, so there is nothing to strip, but it will hold a residue if soap is left to dry on it and that residue shows as a pale bloom. Rinse more thoroughly than feels necessary. Dry it before shelving.

Give it a neighbour of an obviously different height, then leave a gap. Open shelving punishes clusters of similarly sized things, and this tone is strong enough that anything within six inches starts reading as a matching set. Books to one side, nothing on the other, and let the colour carry that section. Dried seed heads suit it better than fresh up there. Empty suits it too.

Larger, and taller in particular. The Jaffa is a squat bowl with a neck, sized around a bulb resting in the opening, which holds it to roughly five inches at the largest. This has more body and stands well above that. The two also want opposite contents: one takes a bulb and no cut stems, the other takes cut stems and no bulb. Different jobs, same shelf.

Nineteenth-century pressed and coloured glassware, filtered through the plainer end of mid-century Scandinavian form. The tone comes out of the first tradition and the refusal to decorate out of the second, an odd pairing on paper that settles down in the object itself. What it borrows is warmth and restraint; what it leaves behind is every cut facet and applied handle in the cabinet. Nothing here is ornamented.