Sara Ricciardi’s Dramatically Abstract Vases

Milan-based designer Sara Ricciardi draws on the beauty of life and its natural materials to create strikingly abstract vases with a playful sensibility. Her sculpted pieces encourage creativity for the owner by allowing for an endless variety of compositions.

Ricciardi’s vases stand out from their environment, and each piece is crafted with a distinctly unique shape. Her collection titled ‘Vette’ for example, was inspired by the freshness and inner stillness the artist experienced while mountain climbing in northern Italy. The pieces include glass-blown in varying circular shapes that mold around sculpted stone bases. They are unexampled in their style in that one might never guess their purpose without any flora present. Moreover, Ricciardi’s trio of collections with variants on the title ‘Natura Morta’ (or ‘still life’ in Italian), include objects with small holes to display and elevate dried flowers and leaves. The collections take cues from the ancient Japanese floral art, Ikebana. Pieces include U-shaped copper and brass tubes, crafted marble spheres, a gleaming metal parabola and a painted ceramic silhouette for Moribana. Most recently, Ricciardi worked on the collaborative project, ‘Libra’: a set of asymmetrical tubular ceramic vases that remain poised by balancing on themselves with the weight of a stone.