Giroid Vase

The gyroid is a piece of mathematics before it is a decoration: a triply periodic minimal surface that curves continuously through space without ever meeting itself. Wrapped around a vessel it gives the twisting, woven look this piece takes its name from, a pattern of curves that never quite settles into a straight line wherever you look at it. The same geometry turns up in nature, in the scales of certain butterfly wings and in the way some polymers separate, which is part of why it manages to look organic and engineered at once. That makes it a maths object as much as a decorative one, at home on a studio desk or a lab shelf, and it invites people to pick it up and turn it round to work out how the surface joins. Dried grasses suit it, though it holds its own empty. One file, and the repeat becomes finer or coarser as you scale it.