Nova Glass Flower Vase

A nova vase is a short vessel whose mouth is markedly wider than its base, so the walls carry outward instead of upward. What distinguishes this one is that the lip is taken further than the form strictly needs, to the point where it stops guiding stems altogether and starts requiring several of them. It is also hand blown, which is why the lip is possible. The proportion is deliberate, not decorative.

They can, with a caveat worth knowing before you buy. Dried material has no water helping it settle, and an opening this wide gives it nothing to brace against, so a few stems will slide to the wall and sit at the edge looking abandoned. Dried works here in quantity, packed until the stems support one another. Two or three will not do it.

Less than the width implies, and the useful figure is not the total. Water only counts up to the point where stems are still standing in it, which on a form that widens as it rises means the bottom third does the work and everything above spreads across a broad surface doing nothing but evaporating. Judge the level against the stems themselves. Ignore the empty space.

Because the lip could not exist in anything else. An opening drawn out this far has to be opened while the material is soft and spinning, by hand, in one continuous operation, and there is no way to press, cast or slip a shape into that flare afterward. Ceramic would need a rim thick enough to be crude at this diameter. The material chose the form here.

Yes, and more easily than on most vessels, because the mark ends up somewhere you can see and reach. On a widening wall the water sits shallow across a broad face, so any deposit forms high up and near the lip rather than down a narrow bore. Wipe it while still damp and nothing ever sets. Left for weeks it needs a soak.

Somewhere low enough to be looked down into. The whole character of this piece is the circle you see from above, which is invisible if it sits at eye level on a shelf, so a coffee table, an ottoman tray or a low bench is where it makes sense. Seated height turns it back into a bowl of flowers. Standing height turns it into a silhouette.

Take the Nova first if you buy flowers by the bunch and the Raygun first if you buy them one at a time. The Nova needs six or seven stems before it looks intentional, so it suits people who arrive home with an armful. The Raygun holds one and is finished. They are not competing for the same table. Volume against gesture, essentially.

In 2016, during a period when this studio believed that difficulty was evidence of quality, which it mostly is not. The flare took a long time to get consistent because every one is opened by hand and the last few seconds decide the diameter. We kept the design and abandoned the reasoning that produced it. It has needed no revision since.