Peculiar Nature of Vases
There’s something quietly strange about porcelain.
It’s everywhere, but it never really disappears into the background. It’s meant to be functional—plates, cups, tiles—but it always feels a little too delicate for everyday life. Fragile. Easy to chip, easy to break. One small knock and it’s gone. And yet, we treat it like something precious. Displayed in cabinets, passed down in families, wrapped up like treasure.
Porcelain asks for care. Gentle hands, soft cloths, the right shelf, the right light. It doesn’t demand attention, but it doesn’t hide either. It’s more high-maintenance than it pretends to be. Maybe that’s what makes it interesting. It doesn’t try to prove its worth through utility. It just is—fine, breakable, beautiful.
Over time, I’ve tattooed a lot of porcelain—vases especially. It’s become one of my favorite themes, when I started tattooing. Part of that pull comes from history too—how classical European cultures, like the Greeks and Romans, put so much into their pottery. Their vases weren’t just vessels; they told stories, marked rituals, carried myth and meaning. Even the cracks feel poetic. That mix of function and symbolism has been around forever—and I guess I’m still fascinated by how it keeps showing up.
There’s something in that contradiction that I can’t let go of—the fragility of the material, made permanent in ink. In a world that’s obsessed with usefulness, porcelain doesn’t try to fit. It just exists. Delicate, maybe even a little impractical. But still here. Still holding space. Maybe that’s enough.
Jorge
