Stone Jardiniere

Found in Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, this 20th-century French stone jardinière was carved from a single block, the kind of soft, pocked stone that drinks in water and weathers a little more with every season outside. A small drainage hole runs through the base, the working detail of a stone made for growing things and not just holding them. The surface has lichened pale and grey, the pits and hollows deepened by decades in a French garden. Sylvie fills it with whatever's in bloom that week and sets it on the kitchen counter, a piece of the garden brought inside for a few days at a time.