A Timeless History
Greek potters named their vessel shapes by function — the amphora for storage, the hydria for water, the lekythos, tall and narrow, for oil. The narrow-necked bottle turns up in Chinese, Persian, Greek and Japanese ceramics alike; the Song court kilns at Hangzhou, in China, were making crackle-glazed ones by the twelfth century. The form has hardly changed since.
SourceThe British Museum — britishmuseum.org · The Metropolitan Museum of Art — metmuseum.org
Science In Action
Centre of gravity — a wide base keeps the loaded vase stable when tall stems lean • Neck diameter — narrow enough to hold stems at an angle, wide enough to let you get them in • Bracing — one rib on its own flexes; ten ribs locked at equal spacing around a ring hold each other stiff • Open sides — an open frame weighs far less than a solid wall of the same size, and shows the stems through it
SourceArtoya design notes · Encyclopaedia Britannica — britannica.com
Arts
Japanese ikebana treats the vessel as part of the arrangement rather than a container for it, and values line, asymmetry and the empty space around the stems as much as the flowers. The vase in this eighteenth-century print holds a handful of stems, and is chosen to hold no more.
SourceThe Metropolitan Museum of Art, Japanese art collection — metmuseum.org
Applications Today
Flat-pack construction is not a compromise. Cutting a three-dimensional object out of one flat sheet is how furniture, packaging and satellite structures are now designed. The Roll-Out Solar Array in this picture went up to the International Space Station rolled like a carpet and unrolled in orbit in June 2017.
SourceVictoria and Albert Museum, design collection — vam.ac.uk · NASA — nasa.gov
The earliest known potter's wheel was turned in Mesopotamia around 3500 BC.
Black-Figure Lekythos (Oil Vessel): Seated Men, Warriors and Horse — Greek, Attic (unknown painter) — c. 510–500 BCE — The Cleveland Museum of Art — 1929.134
