Sculpted Ceramic Vase, Handmade Blue Glaze Canyon Landscape Pottery, 19cm Scalloped Rim Flower Vase

A hand-sculpted ceramic vase carved with a canyon landscape of arches and ridgelines, finished with a scalloped rim and a reactive glaze that runs down the whole piece in cornflower-blue rivulets. One of a kind, hand-built without moulds in my home studio in Katwijk aan Zee, Netherlands.

About this piece

Arches, overhangs and ledges are carved into the wall of the vessel, so the surface reads like the inside of a canyon — or a forest seen at dusk, depending on the light and on you. The rim is finished in a soft scallop, which lifts the whole shape and stops it reading as a straight cylinder.

Then the glaze does its work. It pools rust and amber along every raised edge, breaks into bright blue where it runs, and settles into a mottled sage and olive across the flat surfaces, with a mauve-copper band around the top. The running is real: the glaze melts in the kiln, travels downwards and decides for itself where to stop. I can steer it. I cannot repeat it.

Size & materials

Height: 19 cm

Width: 13 cm

Stoneware clay, high-fired reactive glaze

Hand-built and hand-carved, no moulds · signed on the underside

Watertight, glazed inside

How to use it

A generous flower vase for dried grasses, pampas, eucalyptus, bunny tails or a loose seasonal bunch — the 13 cm body holds a full arrangement upright without tipping. Equally good empty, as a sculptural object on a bookshelf, a console table, a windowsill or a mantelpiece. There is no single front; turn it and the landscape changes.

For fresh flowers I recommend a glass or jar inside, to keep the glaze at its best.

Care

Hand wash only. Not dishwasher or microwave safe. Clean the carved surface with a soft brush rather than a cloth.

Made by hand, start to finish

Around 5 hours of building and carving, then 48 hours in the kiln across two firings. No moulds, no production line — just me, the clay, and a kiln that has the final word.