Pair of White Porcelain Vintage Vases by Atelier-A

From Patricia's Atelier-A collection at Chanteduc, this pair of handmade white porcelain vases comes from Saint-Quentin-la-Poterie, the small Gard village near Uzès that has been the center of southern French ceramics since the Middle Ages. The village supplied the papal court at Avignon in the fourteenth century, sustained an unbroken craft tradition across the centuries, and was formally revived in the 1980s when a group of committed potters returned to work the local clay. Today it is home to dozens of studios and hosts the annual Terralha festival, drawing ceramic artists from around the world. One vase is tall and gently tapered, the other rounder and more compact. Both share the same considered form: matte exteriors that give the porcelain a soft, almost chalky presence, and glazed interiors that catch the light with a faint sheen. Across the body of each, irregular horizontal ridges and trails of applied porcelain create a tactile, gestural surface — white on white, subtle in color but alive in texture. Together they are naturally companionable in scale and restrained enough in palette to work in almost any setting, from a Provençal farmhouse to a contemporary interior. Use them as Patricia does: grouped on a stone surface or kitchen shelf, holding cut herbs, a few stems from the garden, or simply standing as they are.