What We’re Loving Right Now: Artistic Vases by Mount Airy Ceramist Sullivan Owen
The vessels are designed to make arranging flowers easier.
Twist #1 vase by Sullivan Owen / Photograph by Courtney Apple
I can’t arrange flowers to save my life. It’s not for lack of trying — I’m constantly clipping fresh blooms and greenery and trying to put them together in a pretty way. They just never seem to have the same effortless elegance as designs by other folks do. But it never occurred to me that my selection of vessels had something (even a small part!) to do with it until I learned about Sullivan Owen’s beautifully artistic vases. Read about her pieces below — then enjoy creating your next floral display. —Kristen Schott, lifestyle editor
Sullivan Owen’s path from award-winning floral artist to ceramist was less of a pivot and more of an evolution. “Over the years, I’ve seen so many people struggle to make arrangements,” she says.
So she took matters into her own hands, dreaming up vases designed to make arranging easier for those without, well, flower power. Owen enrolled in classes at the Clay Studio in 2020, and now she’s shelved floral design to let her business blossom into its next iteration: a small-batch collection of porcelain vases.
Each piece — first sculpted from clay in her Mount Airy home studio, then slip-cast by a boutique production studio in Oregon — is deceptively organic. The free-form silhouettes, with their graceful undulations, ripples, and folds, are engineered by Owen to perfectly support stems. “It’s about letting the flowers be relaxed and natural.”
Twist #1, $650 at sullivanowen.com.
Published as “Petal Pusher” in the April 2026 issue of Philadelphia magazine.
