Decorating flowers in hybrid vases

Cutting flowers and extracting them from nature to display them in the home is a serious matter for many designers. They rethink the container of these tamed flowers: the vase. Always keeping in mind the functionality of this container, designers like Bilge Nur Saltik, Moises Hernandez or the studio Alyssa.Marcela, reinvent the traditional grandmother’s vase, and play with the possibilities of the material.

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The Bilge Nur Saltik studio specialises in small everyday objects such as vases. The challenge for designer Nur Saltik is to create colourful and moving optical phenomena in these containers. Glass is her favourite material for many reasons: its infinite possibilities for cutting, its transparency and its ability to catch and refract light. It was in the United Kingdom, at the Royal College of Art, during her “Design Products” degree that the designer discovered the technical and aesthetic possibilities of glass. She saw it as an ideal playground for the creation of optical phenomena. Then, by constantly experimenting with the possibilities of glass, she tried to grasp the particularities of human interaction with objects, and how this is transcribed in the retina. The OP-vase series is a conclusive example of her attempts. Handmade in Istanbul (the designer’s home country) and in collaboration with Turkish craftsmen, each glass vase is designed through a complex cutting pattern. This creates kaleidoscopes of 1001 colours and shapes in the eyes of the beholder. A single flower placed inside the vase is enough to create a whole moving bouquet thanks to the patterns of the glass and its deforming thickness.

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Mexican designer Moisés Hernández wants to make the vase disappear in favour of the flower. In his No Vase series, he contrasts a key element, which he deliberately makes non-existent, the vase, with the flower, which stands perfectly upright, as if it required no effort. Floating in the space of the house, the designer wishes to imitate the natural cycle of the flower that emerges alone and strong from the earth. The collection includes three vases produced with different supports: a hexagonal brass base, a rectangular copper base and a round stainless steel base. The vase is made up of two interlocking metal pieces that contain a small container of water and the upper piece has a top hole where the flower’s pedicel is inserted.

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The Vancouver-based design studio Alyssa.Marcela, run by Alyssa Lewis and Marcela Trejo, bases its expertise on creating minimalist objects and interior environments. With the Peel Vase series of vases, the designers explore the aesthetics and functionality of these containers used to enhance cut flowers. Peel Vase comprises a set of containers made of glass and metal. They take the form of a cylinder surrounded by a sheath that unfolds. With a design that is meant to reflect the image of “peeling a stem”, the use of glass echoes both the fragility and strength of flowers.

Peel Vase, Alyssa.Marcela