For thousands of years

For 5000 years, vases haven’t changed. The first vessels were designed to keep people alive - simple containers to hold drinking water. When water became more accessible, these utilitarian forms naturally evolved into decorative objects. We’ve always had a need to make things more beautiful, more personal, to create status symbols. By the time society had control over water supply, those narrow-necked, large-bellied containers became purely decorative. And they’ve basically stayed the same since.

Over 15 years of making thousands of arrangements and hundreds of luxury weddings, flowers taught me what was wrong with the containers available on the market. As a designer, I felt like the flowers were constantly fighting with their vessels. Those large-bellied, narrow-necked ceramic pieces that potters love to throw? Flowers showed me they were being strangled. In low, wide compote bowls, flowers revealed how cramped they felt jammed into green foam. Against rigid glass cylinders and cubes, flowers demonstrated how unnatural those angles felt. No matter how much tape, chicken wire, or foam I used, the flowers made it clear these vessels were designed by people who had never learned what the vessel does when arranging. 

I have a vivid imagination and an almost photographic memory - gifts that help me see what flowers want to become in spaces. Over 15 years, flowers showed me exactly where their stems wanted to rest, how they wanted to move, what support they craved. I began mentally tracing those natural placements, seeing through existing containers to what the flowers were trying to tell me.

Then, in a ceramics class, I started experimenting with shapes that honored what flowers had been teaching me. What if the vessel curved because flowers showed me their stems naturally curve? What if the rim undulated because flowers revealed they don’t all want to be the same height?

My vases look different because flowers taught me what they needed - vases created for a flower’s natural expression, not to challenge wheel-throwing skills or pay homage to ancient water vessels. Flowers taught me to stop containing them and start celebrating them.