Lantern Glass Unique Flower Vase

A lantern vase has a body that swells outward and then closes back toward a shorter neck, which is roughly the outline of an old carriage lamp. The narrow top does the work: four or five stems stand upright in it with no support mechanism at all, and because the body is wider than the opening a small handful reads as generous. Use it when flowers are scarce. It flatters a short supply.

Slender and pale, for two unrelated reasons. The neck is narrow, so anything with a thick base occupies a share that nothing else can then use, and the glass is blue, which competes with a strong warm tone and loses. Muscari, nigella, buttercup, alstroemeria and a white rose all sit well. Hydrangea works in the larger size only. Red anything will fight it.

Both, depending which of the two sizes you take. The larger stands roughly a fifth taller than the medium and carries a wider bowl with it, which suits a mantel where there is some depth behind the object. The medium is the windowsill one, narrow enough that a blind still closes over it. Neither is a floor piece. Both fit a shelf.

Even blue through the body with a deliberate gradient at the shoulder, where the wall thickens as the form turns inward and the tone deepens accordingly. That variation is a property of the shape rather than a fault, and it is the clearest evidence that you are looking at tinted stock and not a sprayed finish. The lip is rolled, not cut. Nothing on it is printed.

One habit, and it is a habit rather than a technique: rinse it out every time the flowers change, whether or not it appears to need it. Blue glass conceals the state of its own interior, so the visual cue that tells you a vessel has gone past acceptable is simply not available in here. So work to a schedule rather than to what you can see. The colour removed the feedback.

With clear or with white, and with nothing else coloured. This is the only blue currently in the range, so it has no relatives here, and standing it beside another tinted piece starts an argument that neither of them wins. A pale porcelain vessel to one side is the reliable answer. Two Lanterns together also work, one of each size. That pairing was intended.

The difference is colour and closure. The Ligne is a clear upright form that shows you everything in it, stems below the water line included; this is blue and drawn inward at the top, so what you get is a silhouette and a tone rather than a full view. In photographs the two of them look about the same size. Held together, this one is rounder.

The outline is a lantern's: a body that widens and then draws back in toward the top. The form was not chosen for the resemblance, though. It was chosen because a closing neck will hold four or five stems upright with no internal support and no tape across the mouth. The name was the shortest accurate description available. Nobody laboured over it.