Handmade vases

The size nobody tells you to buy

There are two vases worth owning and most people own neither. The first is a bud vase — small, narrow, for one or three stems. The second is a wide-mouthed vase around eight to ten inches tall with an opening of at least three inches, which is the only shape that comfortably takes a supermarket bunch without the flowers splaying out sideways.

What most people own instead is a tall narrow vase, usually received as a gift, which is the wrong shape for both jobs: too big for a single stem, too narrow for a bunch. If you are buying a vase for someone, buy one of the two shapes that work.

Why the bud vase is the better gift

It fits the way people actually have flowers. Very few households buy a bunch every week; a great many pick up one stem, or cut something from a garden, or receive flowers and have too many for one vase. A bud vase is the object that makes a single stem look intentional rather than sad.

It is also cheap enough to be a component of a larger gift rather than the whole thing, small enough to post safely, and it needs no shelf commitment — it lives on a windowsill or a desk. For a housewarming, a bud vase plus a candle is a better twenty-five dollars than either object alone.

Glaze on a vase behaves differently

Because a vase is not a food surface, potters use glazes on them that would not be appropriate on a plate — crystalline glazes, heavy crackle, unglazed raw clay exteriors, metallic effects. That is why the most visually dramatic studio pottery tends to be vases rather than tableware, and it is a good reason to buy a vase from a potter whose plates you might not want.

One practical consequence: an unglazed or crackle-glazed exterior can weep slightly. Stand the vase on a coaster or a saucer if it is going on a wooden surface, and if the interior is unglazed raw clay, use a glass jar inside it rather than filling it directly.

Vase or planter?

They are not interchangeable, and the difference is a drainage hole. A planter with a hole needs a saucer and drains properly, which is what almost every houseplant wants. A vase or a pot without a hole will drown a plant slowly, because water sits at the bottom where the roots are.

If you are buying a pretty ceramic pot for someone's plant, either buy one with a hole and a saucer, or accept that it is a cachepot — a decorative outer container that the plant's plastic nursery pot sits inside. That is a perfectly good way to use one, and it is what most people should do.

A signed piece

A potter's mark or signature on the base is worth more than it looks. It ties the object to a person, it is what makes a piece traceable years later, and it is a small commitment by the maker to the work. Where a listing shows the base and there is a mark on it, that is a meaningful signal about who you are buying from — and it is the closest thing to provenance available in a category with very little of it.