vase

{{Short description|Open container, often used to hold cut flowers}}

File:Portland Vase V&A.jpg vase; circa 1790; jasper; height: 25.4 cm, width: 18.7 cm; Victoria and Albert Museum (London)]]

File:The David Vases.jpg; 1351 (the Yuan Dynasty); porcelain, cobalt blue decor under glaze; height: 63.8 cm; British Museum (London)]]

A vase ({{IPAc-en|v|eɪ|s}} or {{IPAc-en|v|ɑː|z}}) is an open container. It can be made from a number of materials, such as ceramics, glass, non-rusting metals, such as aluminium, brass, bronze, or stainless steel. Even wood has been used to make vases, either by using tree species that naturally resist rot, such as teak, or by applying a protective coating to conventional wood or plastic. Vases are often decorated, and they are often used to hold cut flowers. Vases come in different sizes to support whatever flower is being held or kept in place.

Vases generally share a similar shape. The foot or the base may be bulbous, flat, carinate,Emmanuel Cooper. 2000. Ten Thousand Years of Pottery, fourth edition, University of Pennsylvania Press, {{ISBN|0-8122-3554-1}}, {{ISBN|978-0-8122-3554-8}}, 352 pages or another shape. The body forms the main portion of the piece. Some vases have a shoulder, where the body curves inward, a neck, which gives height, and a lip, where the vase flares back out at the top. Some vases are also given handles.

Various styles and types of vases have been developed around the world in different time periods, such as Chinese ceramics and Native American pottery. In the pottery of ancient Greece "vase-painting" is the traditional term covering the famous fine painted pottery, often with many figures in scenes from Greek mythology. Such pieces may be referred to as vases regardless of their shape; most were in fact used for holding or serving liquids, and many would more naturally be called cups, jugs and so on. In 2003, Grayson Perry won the Turner Prize for his ceramics, typically in vase form.

History

There is a long history of the form and function of the vase in nearly all developed cultures, and often ceramic objects are the only artistic evidence left from vanished cultures. In the beginning stages of pottery, the coiling method of building was the most utilized technique to make pottery. The coiling method is the act of working the clay into long cylindrical strips that later become smooth walls.

Potter's wheel

The potter's wheel was probably invented in Mesopotamia by the 4th millennium BCE, but spread across nearly all Eurasia and much of Africa, though it remained unknown in the New World until the arrival of Europeans.{{Cite journal|title=Moorey, Peter Roger Stuart (1994).|journal=Ancient Mesopotamian Material's and Industries: The Archaeological Evidence. P. 146.}} The earliest discovery of the origins of the potter's wheel was in southern Iraq. The discovery of this technique was beneficial to the people of south Iraq because it served as a substitute for their previous inefficient traditions. Upon this new technique, it would then grow gradually and even be adopted for the use of decorating pottery.{{Cite web|url=http://www.ceramicstoday.com/articles/potters_wheel.htm|title=The Origins of the Potter's Wheel|last=Bryant|first=Victor|website=Ceramics Today|access-date=August 14, 2017}}

Garden vase

Garden vases are usually V-shaped but they can also be cylindrical or bowl-shaped. They are usually made of ceramic or, today, plastic. Examples are the Torlonia Vase{{Cite journal|title=Museo Torlonia|journal=Inv. 174. Luca Leoncini, "The Torlonia Vase: History and Visual Records from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries", Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 54 (1991:99–116).}} and the Medici Vase in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.{{Cite news|title=Several 17th and 18th-century variants are illustrated in John Goldsmith Phillips|work="The Choisy-Ménars Vases" The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New Series, 25.6 (February 1967:242–250).}}

Shapes

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Ancient Greece:

Chinese:

Meiping

Modern:

Bottle
Cylinder-shaped vase
Flower brick
Gourd-shaped vase
Jar
Pitcher
Rotund vase
Turnip-shaped vase
Urn
V-shaped
U-shaped

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Gallery

Terracotta lekanis (dish) MET DP114253.jpg|Detail of a red-figure lekanis; 365–350 BC; terracotta; Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City)

Getty Villa - Mixing Vessel with a deceased youth - inv.96.AE.117.jpg|Red-figure mixing vessel; 330-320 BC; terracotta; from Apulia (south Italy); Getty Villa (Los Angeles, USA)

Marble calyx-krater with reliefs of maidens and dancing maenads MET DT4541.jpg|Roman calyx krater with reliefs of maidens and dancing maenads; 1st century AD; Pentelic marble; height: 80.7 cm; Metropolitan Museum of Art

Codex-Style Vase with Mythological Scene MET DP-579-002.jpg|Maya codex-style vase with a mythological scene; 7th–8th century; ceramic; height: 19 cm, diameter: 11.2 cm; Metropolitan Museum of Art

Two flasks with dragons.jpg|Two Chinese flasks with dragons; 1403-1424; underglaze blue porcelain; height (the left one): 47.8 cm, height (the right one): 44.6 cm; British Museum (London)

Vase MET DT3700.jpg|An example of Delftware; circa 1690; tin-glazed earthenware; height: 72.4 cm; Metropolitan Museum of Art

China, Jiangxi province, Jingdezhen, Qing dynasty (1644-1911), Qianlong mar - Vase with Three Rams' Heads - 1989.321 - Cleveland Museum of Art.tif|Chinese vase with three rams' heads; 1736-1795; cloisonné enamel; diameter: 9.4 cm, overall: 14 cm; from Jingdezhen (Jiangxi province, China); Cleveland Museum of Art (Cleveland, Ohio, USA)

Vase (one of a pair) MET DP214514.jpg|Rococo vase; circa 1761; soft paste porcelain; height: 24.1 cm; Metropolitan Museum of Art

Tuinvaas gedecoreerd met de Winter en de Lente Twee tuinvazen met de vier seizoenen, BK-16444-A.jpg|Garden vase decorated with summer and autumn; 1714; marble; height: 146 cm; Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam, the Netherlands)

Vase with cover (one of a pair) MET DP103165 (cropped).jpg|Neoclassical vases with covers; 1784-1795; soft-paste porcelain; height (with cover): 47.6 cm; made at the Real Fábrica del Buen Retiro; Metropolitan Museum of Art

Vase with cover (vase des âges) (one of a pair) MET DP-13079-025.jpg|French vase with cover (vase des âges); 1788; soft-paste porcelain; height: 49.5 cm; Metropolitan Museum of Art

Gallé - Vase with clematis flowers.jpg|Art Nouveau vase with clematis flowers; by Émile Gallé; circa 1900; from Nancy; Budapest Museum of Applied Arts (Budapest, Hungary)