Pastel Blue Rose

The blue rose meaning is a question about something that cannot exist — roses do not have the genetic equipment to produce blue pigment — but the question gets asked anyway, because some things are more important to want than the available biology currently allows. The Pastel Blue Rose is a ceramic wall flower in the precise shade of blue that the rose has been trying to reach since someone first crossed the wrong varieties in the wrong direction. Three inches across. One screw and ninety seconds. No water, no maintenance. The form is a standard garden rose — petals spiraling outward from a tight center, the shape everyone means when they say rose — in a color that the living version cannot be. The studio made it because ceramic does not have the same limitations as roses, and because the things that cannot exist are sometimes the most important to have on a wall. Carried by the Museum of Arts and Design, New York.