In archaeological collections, objects are often displayed in groups. Dozens of small vessels may sit beside one another. At first, they appear remarkably similar. A familiar body. A narrow neck. A small opening. A foot. A handle. A repeated type.
Then you begin to look more closely. One vessel is slightly taller. Another is wider through the body. One neck narrows abruptly while another continues almost seamlessly from the shoulder. A rim turns outward. A base becomes heavier. A painted line moves. A pattern changes. An apparently identical family begins to reveal dozens of individual decisions.
The repetition is real. The sameness is not.
I was reminded of this while looking at groups of small ancient Greek vessels in Rhodes. What fascinated me was not any particular vase. It was the collection. Seeing so many small objects together made it possible to read the differences between them. The variations were sometimes tiny, but they changed everything. A few millimetres altered the proportion. A slightly different curve changed the character. Decoration gave individuality to an otherwise familiar form. Each vessel clearly belonged to a recognisable typology, yet none seemed interested in becoming a perfect copy of the one beside it. There was a shared language without uniformity.
Contemporary production has trained us to expect something different. When we buy six glasses, we expect six identical glasses. When an object becomes a product, consistency is often considered evidence of quality. Dimensions are controlled. Colours are matched. Edges repeat. Variation is reduced. Industrial production has made sameness extraordinarily easy. But perhaps sameness is not always the most interesting ambition.
Landscape architecture offers another way of thinking about repetition. We plant groups of the same species, but we do not expect every tree to become identical. A row of olive trees can have rhythm without uniformity. Stone walls repeat the same construction principle while every stone remains different. Terraces follow one another across a hillside, adjusting continuously to topography. Waves arrive repeatedly at the same shoreline and never draw exactly the same edge twice. Landscape is full of repetition. Almost none of it is identical. Its coherence comes from relationships rather than copies.
This idea became important while developing the Me Meraki Small Vase Project. The project began with a very modest scale: vessels approximately seven centimetres high. Instead of searching for one definitive vase and reproducing it, I became interested in what could happen if the underlying idea remained constant while the form was allowed to move.
The height stays approximately the same. The scale remains recognisable. The object remains unmistakably a small vessel. Everything else can shift. The waist can rise. The shoulder can disappear. The opening can become wider. The body can become heavier. A curve can tighten. The base can become more pronounced. The glaze can respond differently. Suddenly, a very simple object becomes a field of possibilities.
Working at such a small scale makes these differences surprisingly powerful. On a large object, five millimetres may disappear. On a seven-centimetre vase, they can transform the entire proportion. A small adjustment can make one object feel upright and architectural and another soft and almost humorous. This is where making becomes particularly interesting to me. There is a system. But there is also permission to deviate from it.
Perhaps this is one of the things that attracts me to handmade objects. Not imperfection for its own sake. I am not interested in celebrating irregularity simply because something has been made by hand. The distinction is important. Variation can be intentional. It can be designed. A family of objects can share proportion, material and logic while allowing each member to develop its own character. The hand becomes part of the design system rather than something that needs to be eliminated from it.
Ancient ceramic collections make this visible in a particularly beautiful way. A ceramicist was working within traditions that already existed. Certain forms had established purposes. Certain proportions were familiar. Certain decorative languages were understood. And yet there remained space for interpretation. The maker could repeat an idea without surrendering authorship. That feels surprisingly contemporary.
Architecture works in much the same way. A façade can repeat windows without every opening needing to perform identically. A colonnade establishes rhythm through repetition. A landscape uses recurring materials to create continuity across very different conditions. Repetition creates order. Variation creates life. The tension between the two is often where a project becomes interesting.
This is how I increasingly think about collections. Not as sets of identical products. As families. Members of a family share characteristics. You recognise that they belong together. But you would never expect them to be the same. Perhaps objects can work like this too. A repeated curve. A familiar proportion. A material relationship. A colour. A way of meeting the table. These elements create recognition without requiring duplication.
There is also something liberating in accepting that the final object does not need to become a permanent answer. One vase can lead to another. One proportion can suggest a different one. An unexpected result can become the beginning of the next experiment. Making becomes iterative rather than conclusive. The collection remains open.
This is perhaps what those groups of small vessels in Rhodes made so clear to me. Their beauty did not come from perfect consistency. It came from seeing an idea explored repeatedly across many hands, many moments and many individual objects. Each vessel carried the memory of a type. And each one quietly departed from it.
For Me Meraki, repetition without sameness is becoming more than a description of handmade ceramics. It is a way of working. Establish a language. Repeat it. Observe what changes. Allow the material to respond. Allow the hand to intervene. Keep what belongs. Change what doesn’t. Then begin again.
Perhaps a collection does not need one perfect object repeated many times. Perhaps it can be something much more interesting: one idea, continuously reconsidered.