Tag Archives: Vase

Neo-Brutalist Vases Look Like Tiny Towers, Even Without Flowers

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An empty vase can make a shelf look oddly unfinished, as though the flowers were supposed to do all the decorating. Aleksander Kozera’s Neo-Brutalist Vases offer a convincing way around that small domestic problem. Created under his Warsaw-based Yird Ceramics brand, these ceramic vessels have enough architectural detail to hold attention on their own. I’d be inclined to leave them empty before deciding what, if anything, belongs inside.

Their cylindrical bodies are divided into rectangular panels, with tiny indentations that suggest construction details on a concrete facade. Circular recesses interrupt that grid, while curved projections extend from the sides like abbreviated balconies or exposed joints. The effect lands somewhere between an architectural model and a piece of science-fiction set dressing. They look a little like infrastructure for a very small, very design-conscious civilization, which is part of their appeal.

Designer: Aleksander Kozera

The concrete resemblance comes from the ceramic body itself. According to the collection’s Łódź Design Festival description, Kozera uses porcelain casting slip with ceramic pigments and black grog to produce that raw, concrete-like finish. In the close-up photographs, dark speckles break up the gray surface. That texture matters visually: without it, the panel lines and repeated circles could read as a smooth plastic prop. Instead, the surface gives the geometry some grit.

The modular approach also makes the collection more interesting than a row of differently sized cylinders. The festival describes vessels that can be combined and arranged into larger compositions. In the photographs, neighboring forms create narrow gaps, overlapping projections, and changing silhouettes. I like the possibility of treating a shelf as a small architectural composition rather than lining up three matching accessories. The vessels share a vocabulary without looking identical from every angle.

Kozera’s broader studio process helps explain that controlled repetition. He describes beginning with digital modeling, then 3D-printing master forms used to make plaster molds for slip-casting porcelain. That’s a useful distinction for anyone assuming these are printed plastic objects or directly printed ceramics. Digital tools establish the geometry, while casting translates it into ceramic. The workshop photographs make that relationship tangible, showing shaped components and molds alongside vessels at different stages of production.

The finish introduces another layer of detail. The collection description specifies a translucent green glaze, with the small exterior “windows” individually glazed by hand. The green is restrained enough that the photographed pieces still read predominantly as gray architectural objects. I prefer that decision to an all-over glossy finish. Small glazed areas give the eye somewhere to pause without obscuring the panel divisions or competing with the speckled body.

Flowers change the balance considerably. In the styled photograph, branching stems stretch above and across the vessels, disrupting all those disciplined horizontal and vertical lines. The arrangement is sparse enough that the ceramic remains visible, which seems the right approach. A dense supermarket bouquet might conceal much of the detail that makes these worth looking at. A few irregular branches would let the architecture and the plant material each have some breathing room.

My reservation is mostly about where they would live. These are visually busy objects, even with their limited palette. On a shelf already crowded with books, collectibles, and patterned ceramics, the small recesses and projecting edges could get lost. I’d give one a relatively clear stretch of console or place a group against a plain wall. That’s a styling preference, but the design rewards enough space to read its silhouette.

These are physical ceramic works rather than render-only proposals, and the collection is listed as selected for the make me! 2026 exhibition at Łódź Design Festival. That listing does not establish retail pricing or US availability, so it shouldn’t be mistaken for a confirmed shopping announcement.

For me, the strongest choice is the attention given to the sides of each vessel. Turn one, and the relationship between grid, recess, and projection changes. That gives the object a reason to stay on display after the stems are gone, without asking an empty vase to pretend it’s waiting for its next assignment.

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These Glass Vases Look Better Empty, and Nobody Questions It

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A vase usually gets its moment when the flowers arrive. Once the bouquet is gone, even an expensive one can become background scenery. That is the small, familiar problem Maxim Velčovský takes on in Photosynthesis, his new exhibition of glass vases. These pieces don’t wait for a florist to give them a reason to exist. Their rounded forms, pools of color, and shifting reflections turn the empty vase into the main event.

I think that’s a more interesting proposition than another object described as a “statement piece.” Most of us already own things we liked enough to bring home and then somehow stopped noticing. Velčovský’s vases rely on something a room can’t hold still: light. As it moves across their surfaces, different curves emerge, colors deepen, and reflections interrupt the glass. Looking at the photographs, I can imagine finding a new detail each time I walk past one.

Designer: Maxim Velčovský

The silhouettes are strange in the best way. Bulbous shapes cluster around a central vessel, swelling outward like droplets caught just before they fall. Several are topped with a broad, nearly flat rim that gives all that restless volume an unexpectedly calm finish. In one piece, translucent lavender folds around dark, mirrored surfaces. In another, amber, purple, and smoky tones appear to press against one another, as if they are still deciding where to settle.

Then there’s the gold-toned vase, which looks almost liquid despite its solid form. Its polished surface pulls in the room around it, while the rounded glass protrusions make its outline difficult to pin down. The blue pieces have a cooler, more aquatic character, with curves that resemble a wave folding into itself. None of these objects needs an elaborate setting to make an impression. They seem more likely to change the mood of a space than to match it.

The exhibition’s title gives those visual effects a larger idea to orbit. Photosynthesis turns light, water, and carbon dioxide into the material that sustains plant life. Velčovský’s glass doesn’t perform that process, of course. Instead, it makes light feel active. It passes through clear areas, catches on colored ones, and returns from reflective surfaces looking altered. The vase becomes less of a container for something living and more of a way to watch transformation happen.

The exhibition text takes that idea further, describing the vases as bodies at the edge of creation. Art and design theorist Dr. Stephan Hamel reads a kind of gender-neutral sensuality in their forms. That language may be more intense than most people expect from a vase, and you don’t have to share the interpretation to enjoy the work. Still, it gets at why these shapes are so compelling. They swell, overlap, and cling to one another rather than sitting politely in perfect symmetry.

Up close, at least in the images, some of the forms look almost digitally impossible. That makes their material origin especially appealing. The pieces were made at the AJETO glassworks and the new Edo Studio glassworks in Svojkov, grounding those otherworldly shapes in glassmaking rather than a render. Velčovský has long worked across design and conceptual art, and he is also the artistic director of Lasvit. Here, the craft and the idea seem to need each other.

Photosynthesis will be on view October 7 through 11 at the Riding Hall of Prague Castle as part of Designblok 2026. It’s a grand setting for objects that reward a closer look, though the photographs suggest they could be just as absorbing beside an ordinary window. That contrast is part of their appeal to me. They’re ambitious enough to carry an exhibition concept, yet familiar enough to make me reconsider the vase sitting on my own shelf.

I don’t need a vase to explain the origins of life every time I look at it. I do like one that reminds me how much can happen between an object and the light falling on it. Velčovský’s vases make a convincing case that decorative objects can ask for attention without demanding a special occasion. Flowers would look lovely in them, I’m sure. But for once, I’d be tempted to leave the vase empty.

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This Roman Column Vase Treats a Single Stem Like the Main Event

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Flower vases are meant to put the focus on floral arrangements and disappear into the background. But while that may work for large bundles like a bouquet, more minimalist arrangements like the Japanese art of Ikebana will leave a single cutting looking abandoned in a large container. Column Vase is a concept that tries to address that dichotomy by offering a sculptural solution inspired by the most unlikely structures: harsh Roman columns.

It’s not like the iconic design structure was simply replicated and shrunken down. The vase doesn’t copy a Roman’s decorative capital or base, for example, and instead focuses on the cylindrical forms and vertical grooves that have become iconic of this architectural motif. The columns are seemingly cut up into different heights and attached at different points, creating a shape that is interesting even without the flowers.

Designer: Juhyun Lee

Of course, as living things, plants don’t always follow such neat arrangements, nor do they need to. One long stem can be inserted into the tallest cylinder, while shorter sprigs can be placed on the sides. A trailing leaf can even be left alone, creating a less formal but more natural arrangement. The contrast of the ceramic cylinder and the delicateness of the plants makes what would otherwise be a cold, dead object feel a little bit warmer.

One advantage of the modular design is that you don’t need a full arrangement to use it. Place a single module on your desk with a single flower, then bring out the rest and stack them up when you have more to display. On a narrow shelf, they take up separate spots instead of claiming one stretch of space.

Even the material helps with the architectural reference. Soil and sand are incorporated into the ceramic, giving its surface a speckled, slightly rough appearance that feels closer to stone than glossy tableware. The recycled material isn’t simply a detail for the product description, either. Its grain makes the cylinders look substantial beside a fragile blossom or a thin branch collected on a walk.

That material could have looked rather severe if every version were the same pale stone color. Instead, the concept explores shades including muted green, blue, warm terracotta, and off-white. The colors don’t erase the column reference, but they do make it easier to imagine these compact ceramic pieces on an ordinary desk or side table, rather than on a pedestal in a museum.

There are limits to what those slim openings can comfortably hold. A large bouquet might feel crammed into a collection designed for individual stems, and anyone expecting it to hold every bouquet could be disappointed. But if you tend to keep a few cuttings from the garden or a branch from a weekend walk, the smaller openings make that modest habit look intentional.

When there are no flowers around, the cylinders can still stand together as a small ceramic composition. Move one to another room when you find a stem worth keeping, then put it back when it’s empty. Column Vase makes that change feel natural, since the pieces can always be arranged again. Without a roof to hold up, these columns can afford to move around.

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The 3D-Printed Vases That Actually Look Hand-Woven

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I don’t need a lot of vases in my house since I rarely get flowers or other decorations that would need a vessel like that. And even if I needed one, I don’t find the vases available at my local department store all that interesting or worth buying, especially if I won’t be using it often. But if the design is unique or there’s a nice story behind it, it’s something that can draw my attention.

These 3D-printed vases from the Polish design studio Wontek caught my eye because they look distinct and colorful, two things I look for in decorative (and sometimes functional) objects. These aren’t just vases churned out by a 3D printer. Each piece is designed, printed, finished, and packed in-house, with the vases printed from PLA, a compostable bioplastic, using what the studio calls “an original technique of weaving.”

Designer: Wontek

Most 3D-printed objects rely on a nozzle simply building up smooth layers. Wontek, however, uses the printer more like a weaving loom, with each pass of colored filament acting as a thread and stacking into pattern bands that make the vases look hand-woven. The surface motifs are inspired by traditional folk and hand-loom textile patterns, giving you checkerboards, chevrons, striped bands, and eye-like cutouts that make each piece look unlike most mass-produced vases on the market.

The vase walls also aren’t perfectly symmetrical, as you might expect from something 3D-printed. There are ripples, puckers, and folds, much like actual cloth would look if draped over a form. Some pieces even have handles that appear to be cut from the same woven surface rather than attached as a separate part. Color is treated as a design tool here, too, with pinks fading into yellows and blues melting into greens. These aren’t graphics printed onto the surface; they’re built into the structure layer by layer, giving the vases real depth and a texture you can actually feel.

That tactile, sculptural quality is really the whole point. Because the pattern is physically built into the vase rather than applied on top of it, each piece reads as one cohesive art object instead of “a plain vase with a design on it.” That makes it a lot easier to style confidently on a shelf, table, or mantel, and it turns a functional object into a genuine conversation piece, the kind of thing people pick up and ask about. It also helps that PLA is compostable, so you get a bold, maximalist look without the environmental guilt that can come with mass-produced plastic decor.

It’s worth putting Wontek’s approach next to how a bigger name in the design world handles a similar idea. Kartell, the Italian furniture and homeware giant, has long produced its Trama vase collection, plastic vessels molded to resemble woven baskets. The concept sounds similar on paper, but the execution couldn’t be more different. Kartell relies on injection molding, which means every Trama vase in a given run is identical, produced by the thousands in a factory.

Wontek’s vases, on the other hand, come out of a small Warsaw studio where the color, pattern, and even the form can be adjusted for a single order. You’re not just buying a woven look; you’re buying a piece that was shaped, quite literally, one layer at a time, by a process that can’t produce two pieces exactly the same way twice. That difference in scale and intention is where Wontek’s real value lies, especially for anyone who’s grown tired of seeing the same big-box store vase on every other coffee table.

That, ultimately, is the problem Wontek quietly solves. Most of us are stuck choosing between generic, forgettable vases that everyone else owns, too, or genuinely handmade, textile-inspired pieces that come with a steep price tag and a fragility that makes them stressful to actually use. Wontek splits the difference, giving you the look, texture, and story of an artisanal woven object at a scale that modern manufacturing makes accessible, without sacrificing the small-batch character that makes it feel special.

So even though I still don’t need a house full of vases, I’ll admit this is the first one in a long time that’s made me stop scrolling. Sometimes the right story, paired with the right pattern, is all it takes to turn something you didn’t think you needed into something you can’t stop thinking about.

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The Steel Vase That Finally Lets You See the Whole Flower

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The vase has been a solved problem for centuries. You put water in it, you put flowers in it, you set it on a table and call it a day. It’s functional. It works. But Dresden-based designer Ole Müller looked at that formula and decided the whole thing was missing something far more interesting: the flowers themselves.

His piece, the Blumentasche, is German for “flower bag,” and the name does most of the explaining. Made from a thin sheet of brushed stainless steel with a flat rectangular profile, a rounded handle, and a precise grid of circular perforations across its surface, it looks, at first glance, exactly like a minimalist metal tote you might spot in an architecture firm’s waiting room. The vase part only reveals itself when stems begin threading through those perforations, one by one. It was designed in Dresden and handcrafted in Bavaria, details that feel consistent with the object’s particular kind of discipline.

Designer: Ole Müller

That single design decision changes everything about how you interact with a floral arrangement. Instead of flowers disappearing into a container where only the blooms peek out at the top, every stem, every leaf, every branch becomes part of the composition. The arrangement isn’t just something sitting passively in a vessel. It’s a structure you actively build, where height, spacing, and direction are choices you make deliberately. You stop just buying flowers and start actually arranging them.

My first reaction when I saw the Blumentasche was genuine confusion about whether it was a vase, a wall-hanging, or a sculptural object that happened to hold flowers. The answer is probably all three, and I think that’s the point. Good design tends to resist easy categorization. It makes you look at familiar things slightly sideways until you can’t quite unsee the new version.

What it does particularly well is use tension. The steel grid is perfectly geometric, rigid, and controlled. Flowers, by definition, are none of those things. Leaves go rogue. Stems curve. Blossoms turn wherever they please. When you thread them through that orderly grid, the contrast doesn’t compete; it creates. The geometry gradually softens as stems fill the openings, and the whole object shifts from a steel sheet into something closer to a living relief sculpture. It changes every time someone arranges it, and changes again as the flowers age.

Handcrafted in Bavaria, the piece reflects a kind of material honesty that feels increasingly rare. Brushed stainless steel isn’t trying to look like anything other than what it is. There’s no warm wood accent or soft matte coating designed to make it feel more approachable. It earns its place in a room through form alone, and that takes a certain confidence in the design.

I also appreciate that it trusts the person using it. Traditional vases make flower arranging somewhat passive. You fill them, place them, and the container does the structural work. The Blumentasche hands the composition entirely back to you. Each stem has to be considered individually. Where does it go? How far through? Next to what? For anyone who has ever stood in a kitchen rearranging a bunch of tulips for ten minutes without quite knowing why, this is an object that actually makes room for that instinct.

Whether it works as well with a casual grocery store bouquet as it does with thoughtfully selected individual stems is a fair question. I suspect it rewards intention. A single branch of cherry blossoms threading through those perforations probably looks extraordinary. A mixed supermarket bunch might tell a less coherent story. But I’m not sure that’s a criticism. It’s more of an invitation to be a little more deliberate about what you bring home.

The Blumentasche sits at that specific intersection of product design and art object where the most interesting work tends to live. It doesn’t shout. It doesn’t explain itself. It just asks you to look at flowers differently, and once you do, the conventional vase starts to feel like a missed opportunity.

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Moser’s New Aura Collection Captures the Northern Lights in Crystal

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Some things in design need no justification. They exist purely to be beautiful, and you either feel it or you don’t. Moser’s new Aura collection is one of those things, and I’ve been thinking about it since I first came across it.

If you’re not familiar with Moser, let me fix that. Founded in 1857 in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic, this is one of the most quietly prestigious names in the world of luxury glassmaking. The brand has been handcrafting lead-free crystal for 169 years, and that’s not a marketing angle; it’s a genuine legacy. Their work has graced the tables of royalty, filled the shelves of serious collectors, and caught the eye of names you’d recognize. The Kardashians are fans. Dan Brown, while promoting his Prague-set novel in the city itself, received his own engraved Magnus vase. It’s that kind of brand.

Designer: Moser

Moser occupies a specific and fascinating space in design. It’s neither ostentatious nor understated. It has weight to it, not just physically, but culturally. When you hold a piece of Moser crystal, you’re holding something shaped entirely by human hands, and that distinction matters more than ever in a market flooded with mass production.

The Aura collection, their newest release, is inspired by the north. Not the idea of Scandinavia as an aesthetic trend, because we’ve all seen enough of that, but the raw, atmospheric reality of it. The icy cold. The depth of a darkened sky. The specific, almost spiritual moment when the aurora borealis ignites across the horizon. It’s an ephemeral experience most of us will only ever see in photographs, and somehow Moser has managed to capture it in glass.

The collection’s standout pieces are the crystal vases, available in three heights: 21 cm, 26 cm, and 35 cm. Each captures the shifting color palette of the Northern Lights, that slow bleed from icy white into deep, oceanic blue, with striking cut edges that echo the geometry of the landscape itself. They’re atmospheric without being theatrical, and they carry the kind of quiet confidence that only comes from serious craftsmanship. These are objects you place in a room and simply let do the talking.

It’s rare to encounter a design that genuinely earns its inspiration. The aurora borealis is one of the most over-referenced phenomena in the aesthetics world. It shows up on wallpaper, yoga mats, screensavers. Moser’s version feels different because the glass actually does what the inspiration promises. The light moves through it. It shifts depending on the angle, the time of day, the room. It behaves like something alive, which is a strange thing to say about crystal, but it’s accurate.

The matte vases and bowls in the collection deserve their own moment. These pieces feature a frosted surface that softens the drama and brings the aurora-inspired hues into something more intimate, like watching the lights through a quiet fog. The catch is that Moser’s masters can only produce 12 pieces of each type per year. Not 12 per collection. 12 total. That’s not scarcity as a marketing strategy. That’s simply the honest ceiling of human skill and time, and there’s a kind of integrity in that.

I’ve covered a lot of design collections, and “limited edition” has largely become white noise at this point. But this is genuinely different. These pieces take what they take to make, and no amount of consumer demand changes that. It’s a refreshing constraint in an industry that too often prioritizes volume over meaning. For anyone building a home with intention, collecting pieces that actually hold value, or just looking for something beautiful that won’t feel dated in five years, the Aura collection deserves your attention. It sits at the intersection of art, craft, and a deep reverence for the natural world, and it earns every bit of that description. Moser has been doing this for 169 years. At this point, they clearly know something the rest of us are still working out.

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This Vase Was Made From Aluminum Tubes That Would’ve Been Thrown Away

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Vases occupy an awkward corner of product design. Most exist somewhere between functional and decorative without committing to either, and the result is a category that rarely surprises. Ceramic ones carry craft tradition, glass ones depend on color and transparency, and the novelty options try to be sculptural without much conviction behind them. It’s a crowded space that doesn’t often ask interesting questions.

The Offcut Aluminum Vase starts from a different premise. Its form didn’t come from sketching vessel shapes or looking for the next minimalist curve. It came from staring at the end of a rack of industrial aluminum profiles, tubes, and sections waiting to be put to use. That cross-sectional view of bundled profiles, the overhead pattern nobody usually notices, is where the whole design began.

Designer: Raphael Klug

The construction is direct: actual aluminum offcuts bundled together, each piece a different cross-section. Circular tubes of varying diameters sit alongside square and rectangular hollow channels, all cut to different lengths that create a staggered, stepped silhouette when assembled. The look is instantly readable to anyone who has spent time near a metalworking shop or materials supplier, and distinctly strange to everyone else.

What’s surprising is how naturally it functions as a vase. Each opening, whether a round tube or a square channel, holds a single stem at a height set by that profile’s cut length. A tall flower finds one tube, a shorter bloom another, a delicate, small-stemmed flower a third. The structure of the object quietly distributes stems at different levels without any deliberate arrangement on your part.

The visual tension between the material and its setting is part of the appeal. Aluminum profiles don’t belong on a shelf with fresh flowers, and that friction is doing real work. The matte silver surface reads as cold and precise until something organic is placed inside it, and the contrast becomes the whole point. The industrial origin doesn’t disappear; it becomes what makes the flowers harder to ignore.

The choice to use actual offcuts rather than new aluminum cut to look like offcuts also matters. Most of this material would otherwise end up as leftover stock or be discarded at the end of a production run. Using it this way doesn’t require additional processing; the profiles arrive already shaped, already finished, and carrying the full character of their industrial origin without modification.

The vase holds its own even without flowers in it. The stepped arrangement of sections at different heights reads as a small sculptural object that could sit on a shelf as comfortably empty as it does full. The form doesn’t need flowers to complete it, which means that when you do add them, the combination feels considered rather than accidental.

It’s a rare thing when a design object’s material, form, and function all trace back to exactly the same source. Here they do. The offcuts are the structure, the structure is the form, and nothing about their industrial origin has been hidden or softened along the way. The workshop and the shelf turn out to have considerably more in common than most vases would ever admit.

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Fiore Is a Wall Light, a Vase, and a Fragrance All at Once

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Most lighting does one thing: it illuminates. If it’s beautiful, that’s a bonus. If it fits the space, you’re winning. But every once in a while, a design comes along and quietly expands the definition of what an object is supposed to be, and Fiore by Jimmy Rojas is doing exactly that.

Fiore is a wall-mounted sconce, but to call it only that would be selling it short. At its core, it’s a multisensory piece that combines light, living flowers, and fragrance into a single wall-mounted object. The concept is elegantly simple: a built-in vase holds real blooms, and a signature scent designed to complement their natural aroma diffuses into the room. You’re not just looking at a beautiful light fixture; you’re experiencing it. You smell it. You watch the flowers change as the week goes on.

Designer: Jimmy Rojas

The design came out of Jimmy Rojas’ time at the Savannah College of Art and Design, and it’s been collecting recognition ever since. Fiore earned a Silver at the International Design Awards in the Conceptual Products category, was a People’s Choice honoree at the 2025 NYCxDESIGN Awards, and made its way to Salone Satellite in Milan, one of the most competitive stages for emerging designers in the world. These aren’t small accolades. They signal that the design community is paying attention, and for good reason.

What makes Fiore feel particularly relevant right now is the way it taps into something a lot of us are quietly craving: interiors that actually engage more than just our eyes. Biophilic design, the idea of bringing natural elements into our living spaces, has been a conversation in design circles for years. But Fiore takes that concept and makes it literal in the most delicate way possible. A real flower in your wall, radiating fragrance into the room. No screen, no app, no complicated setup. Just nature, light, and scent.

I’ll be honest, I have a slight bias here. I’ve always believed that the best design doesn’t announce itself loudly. It earns its place in a room by making life feel slightly better, slightly richer, in ways you notice over time rather than all at once. Fiore operates on that frequency. It’s the kind of object you come home to and slowly appreciate more as the days pass.

It’s also worth looking at how Fiore fits into the current interior design moment. Maximalism is back with force, from statement furniture to bold wallpapers to gallery walls stacked floor to ceiling. Within that landscape, Fiore manages to feel both bold and restrained. It’s wall-mounted, so it doesn’t compete for floor or shelf space. But it holds living flowers and diffuses scent, so it commands presence in a way that a standard sconce never could. Balancing those two qualities is genuinely difficult to pull off.

Rojas clearly understands that fragrance is one of the most underused tools in interior design. Candles and reed diffusers have long dominated the home fragrance space, and while they work well, they’re objects that sit on a surface and do their thing passively. Fiore integrates scent into the architecture of the room itself, into the wall, which feels like a genuinely new idea. The fact that the fragrance is designed to pair specifically with the real flowers in the vase adds another layer of intentionality that sets this apart from a concept piece that’s merely clever.

If Fiore moves into full production, there are real-world questions worth asking: how often do the flowers need replacing, what happens in winter when fresh blooms are harder to source, and whether the fragrance component can be made refillable and sustainable. Those aren’t dealbreakers, just the details that turn a great concept into a great product. But as a concept, Fiore is one of the more complete design ideas in recent memory. It knows what it wants to be, and it commits fully. Lighting has always been foundational to how a space feels. Fiore is simply asking whether it couldn’t also shape how a space smells, and how alive it feels. The answer, apparently, is yes.

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6 Murano Glass Lamps That Glow Without a Single Cord

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If you’ve ever wished your lamp could double as a sculpture, or that a piece of Venetian craft could actually travel with you from room to room rather than stay anchored to the nearest outlet, Flowers in Wonderland might just ruin every other lamp you’ve ever owned. Not dramatically. Just quietly, the way really good things do.

Designed by Alessandra Baldereschi for Multiforme, the collection is made up of six table lamps, each shaped like an unopened flower bud and hand-blown in artistic Murano glass. They come in soft pastel tones, they’re touch-activated, and they glow. Quietly, beautifully, and completely without a cord.

Designer: Alessandra Baldereschi

That last part matters more than it sounds. Portable lighting has been around for a while, but most of it still skews practical or industrial. A camping lantern. A rechargeable desk light you forget to charge. The cordless lamp category hasn’t exactly been known for elegance, or for the kind of visual impact that makes you actually want to own one. Baldereschi’s Flowers in Wonderland steps into that gap with a very different idea of what a portable lamp can look and feel like. These are objects you place somewhere because they’re beautiful, and the light just happens to be part of that.

The Murano glass angle is worth sitting with. Venice’s glassblowing tradition goes back to the 13th century, when the city relocated its glassmakers to the island of Murano to reduce the risk of fire in its densely packed streets. The craft has stayed there ever since, producing work that ranges from decorative to ceremonial to, yes, commercially mass-produced. What Multiforme does differently is keep the handmade core alive while pushing the design language somewhere genuinely contemporary. Each piece in the collection is hand-blown, which means no two are exactly alike, and the light that filters through the glass carries a warmth and depth that manufactured materials simply can’t replicate.

Baldereschi herself is a Milanese designer with a sensibility that’s harder to pin down than most. She trained at Domus Academy in Milan, one of the more rigorous design schools in Europe, and then spent time in Japan developing ceramic tableware with companies in the Gifu district. That combination of Italian craft tradition and Japanese restraint shows up quietly in her work. She brings a precision to how she handles materials, but also a kind of playfulness that keeps things from ever feeling stiff. Her portfolio spans glassware, décor, and lighting, and she’s shown at the Triennale di Milano, the Seoul Design Festival, and the Moss Gallery in New York. She’s not a newcomer with a single viral moment. She’s a designer who’s been building a coherent body of work for decades.

Flowers in Wonderland premiered at Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice, which is already a statement. It then went on to win the Curiouz Award at Venice Design Week 2025, a recognition dedicated to the most innovative projects in contemporary design. The win acknowledged the collection’s ability to combine technology and craftsmanship in a way that doesn’t feel like a compromise. Usually, when a product leans hard into one, it sacrifices the other. Here, the battery-powered portability and the centuries-old glassblowing technique feel like they belong together.

The collection comes in six flower shapes, each capturing a bud that’s almost open. Not fully bloomed, not completely closed. That specific in-between moment is where Baldereschi seems most interested, and it translates beautifully into objects that feel like they’re holding their breath. You want to place them on a windowsill, a dining table, or a nightstand, and then just watch the light shift as the day changes around them.

Lighting design rarely gets the cultural attention it deserves. We spend a lot of time talking about furniture and architecture, and considerably less thinking about how the quality of light in a room actually shapes the way we experience it. A lamp like this makes that conversation unavoidable. You can’t ignore it. You don’t really want to.

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Rebloom Studio Just Turned Flower Market Waste Into Art”

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Most vases hold flowers. This one is made of them, specifically the ones that never got the chance to be admired. Rebloom Studio, a Korean design studio, has been quietly working on a problem that most people don’t think twice about: the staggering volume of flowers incinerated or discarded at flower markets every day. Because of their short shelf life, thousands of tons of cut flowers are thrown out before they ever reach a buyer, contributing to environmental pollution in a way that feels almost cruelly ironic. The flowers get grown, transported, arranged in stalls, and then burned or dumped because no one got there in time. Flowers, of all things, become waste.

The Petal Vase is Rebloom Studio’s answer to that. Discarded flowers are collected, processed into pulp, combined with Korean paper pulp and a natural binder, and then molded into a vase form. The result is a sculptural object that carries its origins in every surface. Irregular edges, pocked textures, and soft blush and cream tones make it look less manufactured and more like something you’d find washed ashore after a long journey. Each vase is genuinely one of a kind because the flowers used to make it determine its final color and texture. No two will ever look exactly alike, which is either poetic or just good design. Probably both.

Designer: Rebloom Studio

Structurally, it’s smart. The outer shell, built from the flower pulp composite, wraps around a slender glass cylinder insert that holds the water and the stems, keeping the biodegradable exterior dry and intact while fresh flowers bloom inside. When the vase has run its course, it returns to the earth. No trash pile. No incineration. No contradiction.

I’ll be honest: sustainable design can sometimes feel like a pitch dressed up as a product. The concept lands cleanly in a press release but wobbles the moment you actually have to live with the object. The Petal Vase sidesteps that trap. The material story is compelling on its own, but the vase also earns its place aesthetically, full stop. Looking at the photographs, it reads like something between a craft relic and an art object, rough where ceramics would be smooth, warm where glass would be cold. It has weight and quiet character, and it doesn’t try to look like anything other than what it is.

That honesty feels intentional. Rebloom Studio didn’t smooth down the imperfections or disguise the process. The jagged edges at the mouth of the vase, the visible compression of petals and pulp in the walls, the slight asymmetry in the silhouette, all of it stays visible. It’s design with nothing to hide because the entire point is transparency: this object was made from something the industry had already written off.

The floral trade’s waste problem is much larger than most people realize. Supply chains built around freshness and speed leave very little room for error, and unsold flowers don’t get a second chance. That loss isn’t only environmental. It also represents agricultural labor, water use, and energy that went into growing and transporting flowers that never met a buyer. Rebloom Studio doesn’t claim to fix any of that, but the Petal Vase does something important anyway: it makes the invisible visible and puts the problem in your hands, literally, in a way that tends to stick with you.

The vase measures 120 x 120 x 230mm and weighs 200 grams. It comes packaged with the glass cylinder insert in a cylindrical box. It was released in July and August of 2025. Compact. Considered. Purposeful. At a moment when the design world is full of objects that use sustainability as marketing language, the Petal Vase makes its case through the object itself. You can see where it came from. You can feel it. And eventually, it disappears back into the ground, leaving room for something new to grow. That’s not just a concept. That’s a complete design idea.

The post Rebloom Studio Just Turned Flower Market Waste Into Art” first appeared on Yanko Design.