When I look at a group of objects, I often find myself looking at the spaces between them almost as much as at the objects themselves. A vase placed beside another vase creates a relationship. Move them closer and they begin to read as a pair; separate them and each becomes independent. Introduce a third object and suddenly there is direction, rhythm and hierarchy. Nothing about the individual objects has changed, yet the composition has become something entirely different.
This way of looking comes naturally from landscape architecture. We rarely design individual elements in isolation. A tree is considered in relation to another tree, to a path, to a building, to the sun, to a view and to the person moving through the space. What matters is not only what we place, but the distances, intervals and openings created by those decisions. Increasingly, I find myself approaching ceramics in exactly the same way.
Space as material
In design, empty space is sometimes treated as what remains after the important decisions have been made. I think the opposite can be true. Space can be one of the materials of a composition.
Consider a grove of trees. The experience is created partly by trunks, branches and foliage, but also by the intervals between them. Those openings determine where light enters, where a view continues, how the body moves and whether the grove feels dense, protected, open or monumental. A colonnade works similarly. So does a sequence of stepping stones, a row of houses or a collection of vessels on a shelf. Repetition establishes a language, but the interval establishes its rhythm.
The same objects placed ten centimetres apart tell a different story from those placed fifty centimetres apart. The difference is space.
Objects create territories
Every object occupies more space than its physical dimensions suggest. A large vessel has a kind of visual territory around it. A delicate cup can disappear beside it if placed too close. A small object given enough empty space can suddenly become significant. Two pieces touching almost become one composition, while a gap between them allows each silhouette to be read independently.
This invisible territory interests me because it cannot be measured only through the dimensions of the ceramic itself. It depends on proportion, height, colour, visual weight, light and the objects around it. Landscape architects constantly work with these invisible territories. The canopy of a tree occupies a different space from its trunk. A bench creates an area of occupation around it. A step becomes a place to sit. A wall can influence movement without physically preventing it. Objects do the same thing at a smaller scale.
The interval creates the family
This also changes how I think about collections. A collection is usually described through the things it contains: six cups, three bowls, four vessels. But perhaps a collection also exists in the relationships between those pieces.
The Small Vase Project made this particularly visible to me. Individually, each vase is a small study in proportion. Together, something else happens. Differences become clearer. A wide opening becomes wider because a narrow one sits beside it. A low body appears more compact beside something elongated. Repetition establishes the family, but spacing allows the individual characters to emerge.
Too evenly arranged, and the objects can begin to feel like inventory. Too randomly placed, and the relationship disappears. Somewhere between those conditions, the collection begins to have rhythm. It becomes a composition rather than an accumulation.
Learning from landscape
Mediterranean landscapes provide endless examples of this. Olive trees are particularly beautiful because they rarely create a perfect grid. Their spacing responds to cultivation, terrain, age and circumstance. Seen across a hillside, there is repetition, but there is also irregularity. The landscape feels coherent without becoming uniform.
Dry-stone terraces work in another way. Walls repeat across topography, but the distances between them change according to slope. Buildings in an island settlement cluster tightly in one place and open suddenly into a courtyard or view in another. Narrow streets expand into small squares. Shade alternates with intense light. These landscapes are memorable not because every part has been filled, but because solid and void continuously define one another. That principle can exist at the scale of an object collection too.
Leaving something out
There is a temptation in making to keep adding. Another object completes the shelf. Another vase fills the gap. Another plate makes the table feel abundant. But sometimes the more difficult decision is to leave the gap.
Restraint is not necessarily about having fewer things. It is about understanding when another element strengthens a composition and when it weakens it. This is something I encounter constantly in landscape design. An empty area can feel unfinished during the design process because there is nothing obvious to point to. Yet once built, that opening may be precisely what allows the rest of the space to work.
The same can happen with objects. An empty part of a shelf can give a vessel presence. A large area of table around a small bowl can make its proportion more visible. Space can frame an object without physically surrounding it. In this sense, absence becomes an active design decision.
Light occupies the space too
The space between objects is not truly empty anyway. Light enters it. Shadows cross it. Views continue through it. Hands move through it. On a table, food eventually occupies it. In a room, the background becomes visible through it. This is why spacing cannot be separated from atmosphere.
Place two vessels close together in strong lateral sunlight and their shadows may overlap, visually connecting them. Move them apart and each shadow becomes its own form. As the sun changes, the composition changes again without either object moving. I find this particularly beautiful because it means the composition is never entirely fixed. The objects establish the structure. The environment continues designing it.
From object design to composition
As Me Meraki develops, I want to think increasingly beyond the individual ceramic piece. Designing a cup, vase or plate is one scale of the work. Designing how several objects coexist is another.
This does not mean creating predetermined sets in which every object has a fixed position. I am more interested in developing enough relationship between pieces that different compositions remain possible. Objects should be able to move, separate, gather and find new neighbours while retaining a sense that they belong to the same world.
This is closer to how I think about landscape. A landscape is not a still image. People move through it. Vegetation grows. Shadows shift. Objects are occupied differently over time. The design establishes relationships strong enough to accommodate change. A collection can perhaps do something similar.
What we design when we design nothing
The space between objects cannot be fired in a kiln. It cannot be held in the hand or placed in a box. It cannot be sold as an individual piece. And yet it can completely determine how those pieces are experienced. That makes it particularly interesting to me.
Design is often associated with producing things, but some of the most important design decisions concern what happens around those things: how close, how far, what remains visible, where the eye rests and where nothing needs to happen.
Perhaps this is another connection between landscape architecture and ceramics that I had not initially expected. In both, we make objects. But we also make relationships. And sometimes the relationship is created simply by knowing where to leave space.