Jardiniére 1902 - 1903

This is a jardinière by Hugo Leven. I don’t know exactly when he made it, but he would have worked with metal—probably pewter or silver—to create this vessel for plants. The metalwork is so elegant. It’s like everything is melting, folding, and dripping, a bit like paint. I bet Leven was thinking about organic forms, like vines or flowers, when he designed it. Look at the handle. It's as though it’s still in the process of growing upwards! It’s like he froze a moment of transformation. The surface looks pretty smooth, but I wonder how it feels to touch? Cool and heavy, probably. This piece reminds me a lot of Art Nouveau and the kind of work that was happening elsewhere at the time. Artists were looking at nature, but also thinking about how things could be both useful and beautiful at the same time. And this one, like all art, is a conversation across time, inspiring creativity. It’s an embodied expression, right? Ambiguous and uncertain, leaving space for multiple meanings.