Welcome to Style Detective, a series from T Magazine. Each month, we’ll investigate readers’ questions regarding the items and objects they can’t stop thinking about — and can’t track down. Subscribe here and click this link to submit your own questions.
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| Getty Images; Elevation Pictures |
 | By Tom Delavan Tom Delavan is the design and interiors director of T Magazine. |
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“I’ve been trying to find out who made the vase in the attached photo. It’s a screenshot from Durga Chew-Bose’s 2024 film ‘Bonjour Tristesse.’ Help?” — Daniel, Belize City, Belize
After receiving your note, I went home and watched Durga Chew-Bose’s “Bonjour Tristesse.” Without giving too much away, the plot, which is based on Françoise Sagan’s 1954 novel and Otto Preminger’s 1958 film adaptation, follows Cécile (played by Lily McInerny), a young American woman on vacation in the south of France with her widowed father, Raymond (Claes Bang), and his laid-back girlfriend. Their convivial summer holiday sours when Anne (Chloë Sevigny), an old friend of Raymond and his late wife, shows up, “undermin[ing],” wrote the Times critic Natalia Winkelman, “our protagonist’s status as the apple of daddy’s eye.” In one memorable scene, we find Anne — a sophisticated and disciplined fashion designer, and a threat to Cécile’s carefree existence — cheerfully arranging flowers in a rippled vase with a moss-green glaze.
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| The actress Chloë Sevigny arranging flowers in a scene from the 2024 film “Bonjour Tristesse.” Elevation Pictures |
To track it down, I thought I’d reach out to someone who worked on the film, and as it happens, T editor at large Nick Haramis knows Chew-Bose, a Canadian writer and first-time film director. “I hope we can get to the bottom of this,” she said, referring me to the art director Samantha Mugnier, whom she felt certain would remember “this beautiful big vase.” Although Mugnier wasn’t sure about the object’s provenance, she pointed me in the direction of Le Garage Christian Sapet, the Parisian prop house from which she’d rented it. Their inventory list was mostly a dead end, but it did offer a clear image of the elusive object.
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| Left: the film’s vase, a rental from the Parisian prop house Le Garage Christian Sapet. Right: a similar vessel by the San Diego-based artist Elena Miller. From left: via Christian Sapet Garage; courtesy of Elena Miller Gallery |
After searching online, I was able to find some similar vases with a textured glaze and very prominent ridges. Perhaps the closest was the Coral Reef Vase by the San Diego-based artist Elena Miller, whose work is inspired by nature. You can commission Miller to make one in a larger size (16 to 18 inches tall) for about $800. If you don’t mind a different shape, you might also consider the Sunken Boat Collection from the Atlanta-based Currey & Company, which produces home furnishings and accessories. According to its website, the collection, which is meant to evoke the timeworn look of treasures excavated from a shipwreck, was made by a group of women who live at the border of Myanmar and Thailand.
