Blue White Cosmos

Cosmos flower meaning depends entirely on who's asked, and a man once stood in front of this exact piece and called it a wildflower while staring straight at its very deliberate, very glazed, very not-wild surface. He wasn't wrong exactly — the glaze pools blue into white in a way that resembles weather more than craftsmanship, more like something that happened to the clay than something someone made from it. Kept as beach-style decor, it holds that pattern permanently, needing neither water nor attention from whoever owns it. A distinctive gift for an aunt should carry a story worth repeating over dinner, and this piece already comes with one built in. Chive has been building pieces this way, by hand, since the studio's founding in 2004. This maker's ceramics have passed through the Brooklyn Botanic Garden shop before now. We've decided he was right for the wrong reasons. We're taking it.