Eva, Olga, Nina or Titania: Comparing Wiinblad's Face Vases

Bjørn Wiinblad gave four of his vase series a woman's name and, in most cases, a woman's face: Eva, Olga, Nina and Titania. They share a hand and a palette, yet they differ sharply in shape, depth and the way they hold flowers. This comparison sets them side by side so you can pick the one that suits your shelf, your flowers and your taste for ornament.

One artist, four characters

Wiinblad (1918–2006) trained as an illustrator before he turned to ceramics in the 1940s, and the same drawn line runs through everything he made afterwards: posters, stage designs, porcelain and the painted figures he produced at his house north of Copenhagen. The faces are the signature. Wide eyes, small closed mouths, flushed cheeks and hair that turns into pattern appear again and again, and these four vases revisit that archive rather than inventing something new.

What changes from series to series is the character. Eva is the composed one, a head set on a patterned dress. Olga is round and cheerful. Nina drops the portrait format altogether and turns the female figure into a flat graphic panel. Titania, named after the fairy queen in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, wears a crown of pointed petals. Seen together they read like a small cast from one of Wiinblad's stage productions.

Face motifs and body shapes

Eva: a portrait on a cone

The Eva Vase H18.5 cm is drawn from Wiinblad's original Eva vases, which paired a wide head with a conical body. The face comes from his original outlines and the dress pattern from his artwork, applied as a coloured decal under a glossy glaze on porcelain. It is the only one of the four made in porcelain, and it comes in two blues, dark blue and a lighter blue. At 18.5 cm it is the shortest, yet at 0.86 kg it is also the heaviest, which gives it a planted, steady feel on a table.

Olga: a face on a ball

The Olga Vase H20 cm blue reinterprets a vase Wiinblad made with the Danish ceramic factory Nymølle. The face sits on a full, round body: a sweet round face with almond-shaped eyes and the triangular nose that recurs across his work. Above it rises a cylindrical top, so the vase reads as a head wearing a tall patterned hat. The colouring is classic dark blue with ruby red dots. This 20 cm piece is the medium size in the Olga series.

Nina: the figure as a flat panel

The Nina Vase H22 cm yellow/pink is the outlier. There is no rounded head here. Instead the female figure is drawn across a flat, waisted slab in yellow, with pink botanicals in raised decals that you can feel as well as see. The silhouette curves in at the middle like a body, and the decoration does the rest. It is the most graphic of the four and the lightest at 0.578 kg.

Titania: a head crowned with petals

The Titania Vase H25 cm blue is the tallest at 25 cm. Its face sits low on a round head, and the upper part opens into a crown of pointed petal forms, painted in a fresh blue with red and pink details. The name comes both from Shakespeare's fairy queen and from imaginative ceramic figures Wiinblad made in earlier decades, which this series builds on. Of the four, Titania is the most sculptural from the side and the back, because the petals carry the pattern all the way round.

The four vases side by side

Flat Nina against round Olga on a shelf

The clearest contrast in the group is between Nina and Olga, and it shows most on a bookshelf. Olga is 19.5 cm deep with a 17 cm diameter. On a standard shelf she takes up nearly the full depth, and because she is round she reads as a volume from every angle: you see her face straight on, her cheek from the side, and the pattern on her top from above. She holds her own between books and needs some clear space either side to look deliberate.

Nina is only 7.5 cm deep. She will stand on a narrow ledge, a window sill or the front edge of a shelf with books behind her, and from the front she behaves almost like a framed print: 22 cm tall, 14 cm wide, with the drawing doing all the work. Turn her sideways and she nearly disappears, which is exactly why she suits tight spots. The trade-off is that she is meant to be seen front-on, so place her where people look at her face rather than her edge.

Put the two together and they balance each other. Olga's round mass next to Nina's flat plane gives a shelf both depth and line, and the shared Wiinblad faces keep the pairing coherent even though the colours differ. If you want to group more than two, stagger the heights, Eva at the front, Olga and Nina in the middle, Titania at the back, so each face stays visible. Our guide to grouping vases by height and colour covers the same principle with a quieter palette.

Which one to choose

Choose Eva if you want the most classic Wiinblad portrait and a vase that sits firmly on a desk or bedside table. Her compact footprint suits a single large flower or a short, dense posy, and the choice of two blues lets you go deeper or lighter.

Choose Olga if you want the warmest character and room for a fuller bunch. She is the most generous in volume and works well on a deep shelf, a sideboard or a kitchen table where she can be seen from several sides.

Choose Nina if space is tight or you prefer a vase that behaves like wall art. She is the lightest and slimmest, takes a few slender stems, and brings yellow and pink into rooms that lean towards blue.

Choose Titania if you want height and a centrepiece. At 25 cm with a petal crown, she frames loose, airy stems and looks good from any angle on a dining table.

All four are made to be wiped with a damp cloth and washed by hand rather than in the dishwasher, and painted ceramic keeps its colour best out of direct sun. To see the candle holders, flowerpots and larger figures that share these faces, browse the full Bjørn Wiinblad collection.