Sculptural Vase

A sculptural vase is a vessel built as an artwork first. The test is simple: it should look complete standing empty. If it only works once you fill it with flowers, it is a container — if it holds a surface and a shadow on its own, it is sculpture that happens to hold water.

Snow White, a hand-formed sculptural vase by Bec Stevens, holding dried hydrangeas on a concrete plinth
Snow White (Vase), styled with dried hydrangea. The opening is part of the form rather than a hole cut into it.

Built from the same folds

The vessels come out of the same practice as the wall sculptures — hand-formed folds, finished by hand — turned into the round. Where a wall piece has a front and a shadow, a vessel has to work from every angle, so the fold has to resolve all the way around. That makes them slower to build, and it is the reason there are fewer of them.

They are finished in the same palette: pearl and blush, bone and cream, chocolate and bronze. The pale ones in particular change noticeably with the light in a room, which is why they read differently on a dining table at night than on a hall console in the morning.

With and without flowers

Empty is a legitimate way to use these. A vessel on its own on a plinth or a sideboard is a still-life, and several of the forms are more legible with nothing in them at all.

If you are styling them, the folds do better with dried and sculptural material — hydrangea, eucalyptus, banksia, bare branches — than with a dense round bunch, which flattens the top of the form and hides the opening. Weight matters too: a tall arrangement in a light vessel wants a stable surface.

Snow White vase by Bec Stevens standing empty, showing the folded form in full
The same vessel empty — the test of a sculptural vase is whether it still holds the eye with nothing in it.

Vessels that are also lamps

A few pieces cross over. Blush Pearl is built with a removable base — with the base it is a lit sculptural lamp, without it a vessel. Snow White exists in both a lamp and a vase version. If you want one object doing two jobs, those are the ones to look at, and they are covered further on the sculptural lighting page.

Care

Dust with a dry, soft cloth — no solvents, and nothing abrasive, particularly on the matt and hand-painted metallic finishes. If you are using water in a piece, an inner glass or plastic sleeve is the safest approach and makes changing the water easier without handling the form.

Availability

The vessels are the smallest group in the collection and are made in ones, not runs. Nothing is editioned or reproduced, so what you see is what exists.

See the pieces available now, or read about the artist and how the work is made.