St-Onge describes the work as a large collection, with design emerging through the ensemble. Across the vases, the design sits in the intervals: a squat milky body beside a narrow neck, a heavier colour answering a clearer volume, one rounded form making the next appear stranger. The reference points he names move between domestic sculpture and vernacular form, from Valentine Schlegel’s lived-in interiors to Bernard Rudofsky’s architecture without formal authorship. Miyuki Tanobe’s crowded urban scenes and Laura de Santillana’s glass works offer another kind of permission, allowing glass to carry humour and pictorial feeling.

Verre d’Onge keeps the ancient technique of blown glass close to the hand, while letting the object loosen into character. A vase might seem almost figurative through posture alone, with its neck pinched high or its body gathered low, the surface carrying the uneven record of heat, breath and colour before the glass has fully cooled. Placed together, the vases become a loose family, their differences doing the work of composition.

1. Valentine Schlegel, Je dors, je travaille, 2017.

2. Bernard Rudofsky, Architecture Without Architects, 1965.

3. Miyuki Tanobe

4. Laura de Santillana