We just finished Riva, the second vase in our flower line, and it has been sitting on the studio shelf for a couple of weeks while we lived with it. That is usually how we test a piece. Not by photographing it straight away, but by walking past it every morning and seeing whether it still earns its spot. Riva does, and the reason is mostly about what the light does to it.
The surface is a faceted honeycomb texture, a lattice of small diamonds wrapped around the whole form. On its own that sounds like a detail. In practice it changes the object depending on the hour. Flat afternoon light makes the pattern quiet and even. Low morning light rakes across the facets, catches the ridges, and drops the valleys into soft shadow, so the vase reads almost like it is breathing.
Why the form is tall and tapered
Riva stands 260mm high with a 140mm diameter, and the silhouette narrows gently toward the neck. That taper is doing a specific job. A narrow opening gathers stems and holds them upright instead of letting them slump against the rim, which is exactly what you want for anything with height. Put a full spray of pampas or dried grasses in and it fans out from the neck on its own, no fiddling required.
The height also gives the texture room to be seen. A short, wide vase hides most of its surface behind whatever you put in it. Riva keeps a tall band of the honeycomb pattern visible above the vessel line, so the object and the arrangement read as one thing rather than a stand competing with a bouquet.
Styling it, with stems and without
Dried material suits Riva best, and it is the low-effort route to something that looks considered. Designers tend to keep it simple: a few pampas stalks in a vase are enough to give a table a minimalist look, and the same source notes that pampas is especially striking in tall vessels. One useful, unglamorous tip from that piece: dried pampas can gather dust, so every so often take it outside and give it a gentle shake rather than trying to clean it in place.
A few combinations we keep coming back to:
- A single tall spray of pampas, off-white or the moodier toasted brown, left slightly asymmetric so it leans toward the light.
- Dried grasses mixed with a couple of taller seed heads for a looser, meadow feel.
- Nothing at all. Riva holds a shelf or console on its own because the pattern gives it enough to say.
That last point matters more than it sounds. Plenty of vases look unfinished when empty. Riva was drawn so the diamond lattice does the work of an arrangement even before a stem goes in, which means you are not obligated to keep buying flowers to justify it.
The light trick nobody photographs
Here is the part we did not plan and now like most. Set Riva near a window in the morning and the facets throw a lattice of their own onto the wall behind it. The shadow shifts as the sun moves, so a bare stretch of wall gets a slow, changing pattern for an hour or two a day. If you have a spot that catches early sun, put the vase a hand span or so off the wall and let it cast. It is a small thing that makes a plain corner feel deliberate.
The material, and why we print to order
Riva is made from plant-based PLA. If you have not run into it, PLA is a bioplastic, and it is made by converting a plant crop, most often corn, into a resin. It comes from renewable feedstock rather than petroleum, which is the whole reason we use it. For a fuller technical picture, PLA is produced by fermenting renewable resources and can be composted or recycled, unlike conventional petroleum plastics that sit around for centuries.
We want to be honest about the caveats, because the material is not magic. PLA breaks down properly in industrial composting conditions, not in a backyard bin, and it needs the right facility to do it. It is also a plant crop, so it carries the usual land and water questions that come with agriculture. What it does well is start from a renewable source and avoid fossil feedstock, and for a decorative object that will be kept for years, we think that is a sensible trade.
The bigger sustainability lever, honestly, is how we make things. Each vase is printed to order, roughly three days from your order to a finished piece. We do not hold shelves of stock that might never sell, and the additive process lays down material only where the form needs it, so offcuts and waste are close to nil. A vase that does not exist until someone actually wants it is a quieter kind of manufacturing than a warehouse full of guesses.
Where Riva sits in the range
Riva is the second flower vase we have released, and it leans more architectural than our softer, rounded shapes. If the honeycomb geometry is your thing, the Helix Vase plays with a related idea of a repeating surface catching light, and it is worth a look side by side. The full vases collection shows how the different textures behave in a room.
Japandi as an idea is mostly about restraint: warm, pared back, a little bit sculptural, nothing shouting. Riva fits that by giving you one strong texture and then getting out of the way. Fill it, leave it empty, or point it at a sunny wall and let it draw. It holds up either way.