Omaggio vs Omaggio Nuovo vs Circulare: Which Kähler Vase

Kähler's striped vase is one of the few contemporary Danish ceramics that most people can picture without being shown. What fewer readers realise is that the stripe now exists in three separate treatments, and they behave differently on a shelf. Here is how the original Omaggio, the Omaggio Nuovo and the Omaggio Circulare compare, and which of them sits quietest in a group.

Where the stripe comes from

Kähler was founded in Næstved, Denmark, in 1839, and built its reputation on glazes and lustre rather than on graphic pattern. Omaggio, Italian for tribute, is the Copenhagen studio Stilleben's homage to that ceramic heritage. Reckweg and Nordentoft took the house's decorative tradition and reduced it to one idea: a band of horizontal stripes, painted by hand, wrapped around a body that tapers gently towards a narrow neck.

That neck is the part people overlook. It is narrow enough to hold three or four stems upright without a frog or a grid, which is why a single peony or a branch of cherry reads as deliberate rather than sparse. The stripes also do something optical: because they run horizontally, they widen the vase visually, so a 20 cm piece holds its own next to taller, plainer neighbours.

Omaggio: the original hand-painted stripe

The Omaggio Vase H20 cm is the reference version. It is made in faience, stands 20 cm tall with a diameter of 16 cm, and weighs 1 kg. The glaze is glossy, and the three colourways read very differently in daylight: Black is graphic and flat, Mother of pearl shifts between cream and pink depending on the angle, and Silver has a cool metallic lustre that picks up whatever is around it.

The same design runs at H31 cm, with a diameter of 19 cm and a weight of 1.8 kg. That extra 800 g matters more than the 11 cm of height: the taller vase is heavy enough at the base to take long tulips or gladioli without leaning. If you intend to buy one Omaggio and use it all year, the 31 cm is the more flexible size. If you intend to buy several and group them, start at 20 cm.

The glossy surface is the defining trait. It reflects lamplight in a hard, bright line down the shoulder of the vase, which is lively on a dining table and busy on a crowded shelf. Mother of pearl is the calmest of the three, because the lustre softens the boundary between one stripe and the next.

Omaggio Nuovo: the stripe in softer colour

Omaggio Nuovo is the modern reading of the same hand-painted stripe, and the difference is chromatic rather than structural. The Omaggio Nuovo Vase H20.5 cm comes in dark blue and dusty rose, both in glazed ceramic, and the stripe sits tonally inside the body colour instead of contrasting with it. On a shelf that already holds books, frames and a lamp, this is the version that recedes.

For height there is the Omaggio Nuovo Vase H30 cm blue, which gives the series a tall form in a single strong colour. Used on its own it works as a floor-adjacent piece beside a sofa or in a hallway, with a few long branches rather than a bouquet. Used with the 20.5 cm, it sets up a two-height pairing that does not need a third object to feel resolved.

Omaggio Circulare: matt surface, eco clay

Omaggio Circulare is the most recent rethinking of the design, and it changes both the material and the light. The Omaggio Circulare Vase H20 cm anthracite grey is made in eco clay, produced with a circular approach to the clay itself, and finished matt rather than glossy. It keeps the familiar dimensions, 20 cm tall and 16 cm in diameter, but weighs 1.3 kg, noticeably denser in the hand than the faience original.

The matt finish is the reason to choose it. Without the gloss there is no highlight running down the body, so the stripe is read as texture rather than as reflection, and the anthracite grey behaves like a neutral. In a grouping of mixed ceramics this is the piece that holds everything together instead of competing. The larger H31 cm version takes the diameter to 19 cm and the weight to 2.6 kg, which makes it the steadiest of every vase discussed here.

The three side by side

Which one to choose, and how to group them

Choose the original Omaggio if you want the vase to be the thing people notice: black on a pale sideboard, or Silver where there is already metal in the room. Choose Omaggio Nuovo if the shelf is already full and you want colour without contrast. Choose Omaggio Circulare if you are building a group, because the matt surface is the one that will not throw a highlight and steal attention from the others.

For grouping, three rules hold. Work in odd numbers, keep the heights genuinely different (20 cm beside 30 cm reads better than 20 cm beside 20.5 cm), and let only one vase in the group be glossy. Pick by stem length rather than by height alone: short garden flowers sit better in the 20 cm bodies where they can lean on the rim, while long straight stems need the heavier 31 cm base to stay upright.

Care is the same across all three. Wipe with a damp cloth and keep them out of the dishwasher. Hand-painted stripes vary slightly from piece to piece, which is part of the point, so buy the sizes together if you want a group that looks related rather than matched. If you are still deciding between series rather than sizes, our comparison of Hammershøi and Omaggio covers the fluted alternative from the same house. To see how the striped bodies sit next to porcelain and glass, browse the full Vases collection.