Six roses, six settings, and a gold line thin enough to catch the candlelight

Round rose placemats and matching coasters, each one printed from an original oil painting by Australian artist Jill Kirstein and finished with a fine double gold pinline. Six different blooms run through the set - full pink cabbage roses, apricot tea roses, cream-white roses with golden stamens, a buttercup yellow bloom, and two softer blush studies. Look closely and you can see the canvas weave of the original paintings coming through the print, which is what separates these from the generic florals of the same era. Every coaster repeats the design of its matching placemat, so you get six coordinated settings rather than a mixed bag.

🔸 Key Features

▫️ Maker - Jason Products Ltd, Auckland, New Zealand, with a printed copyright date of November 1998 on every piece
▫️ Artist - Jill Kirstein, Australian painter born in Katoomba, signed within each image
▫️ Design - Six individual rose studies on a cream ground, edged with a double gold pinline
▫️ Material - Cork-backed hardboard with a heat-sealed lacquer surface, the construction Jason built its name on
▫️ Shape - Round, the less common Jason format and considerably harder to find than the standard rectangle
▫️ Set size - 12 pieces: 6 placemats and 6 coasters, matched by design
▫️ Function - Wipe clean with a damp cloth, heat resistant, and the coasters are generous enough for a mug rather than only a wine glass

📏 Measurements

📏 Placemats - Diameter: 24 cm (9.4 in), set of 6
📏 Coasters - Diameter: 10 cm (3.9 in), set of 6

Roses Painted in Oils, Printed for the Dinner Table

Jason Products has been making cork-backed tableware from Auckland since 1962, and by the late 1990s the company had moved past commissioning anonymous florals and was licensing artwork from established painters instead. Jill Kirstein came to oils by way of competitive flower arranging, and has said roses are the subject she finds most challenging and most rewarding. Her paintings hang in collections across Australia, the UK, Singapore and South Africa, and turn up regularly through Australian auction houses including Leonard Joel. Alongside the originals, her work has been published as cards, prints, calendars and tableware, which is exactly how these came to exist.

In a home, round placemats soften a table in a way rectangles simply cannot manage - especially on timber, or over a plain linen cloth where the shape gets to do the work. Cream and gold is a forgiving palette, so these sit happily beside white ironstone, pink transferware, chintz teacups, or whatever mismatched china you already have in the cupboard. The printed 1998 date makes the set precisely dateable too, which is rarer than it sounds for tableware of this kind.

Condition & Packaging

▫️ Very good vintage condition
▫️ Lacquer surfaces are clean and glossy with only light age-appropriate wear
▫️ Gold pinlines are intact and unworn across all twelve pieces
▫️ Cork backing is complete and sound on every piece
▫️ Sold without original box
▫️ Carefully packaged with sustainable materials for a safe arrival
▫️ Combined shipping available - significant overages refunded at dispatch

📩 Need more photos or have a question? We're always happy to help - send us a message any time.

Set a Table with an Artist's Roses

Most surviving Jason sets are the standard rectangle, so the round format alone narrows the field, and a complete twelve with placemats and coasters still matched by design narrows it further. Kirstein's originals sell at auction in the hundreds, which makes this a rather affordable way to live with her rose work. Set for six, ready to use, and dated to the month.

Sculptural first, useful second - which is precisely the point

This Finnish ice glass dish is one of those pieces that changes depending on where you stand. Deep icicle spines radiate out from a smooth polished well, each ray finishing at a slightly different length so the rim reads as broken ice rather than a tidy circle. The upper face is rough, frosted and irregular; turn it over and the underside is a different world entirely, finer close-set ribbing that carries light straight down through the base. In flat light it almost disappears. When the sun reaches it, it throws bright flecks across whatever surface it's sitting on.

▫️ Maker - Humppila Glass, Finland, unmarked as most of the range was paper-labelled only
▫️ Designer - Tauno Wirkkala, brother of Tapio Wirkkala
▫️ Series and model - Kalevala series, Revontulet (Northern Lights), produced 1972 to 1987
▫️ Design - radiating icicle spines around a smooth polished central well, textured upper face and finely ribbed underside
▫️ Material - mould-cast glass, hand-finished rather than simply machine-pressed
▫️ Style - Scandinavian Modern with a brutalist edge, 1970s to 80s
▫️ Everyday scale - at 18.5 cm this is the usable size rather than the oversized centrepiece

📏 Width: 18.5 cm (7.3 in)
📏 Height: 5.2 cm (2 in)
📏 Central well: 8.5 cm (3.3 in)
💧 Capacity: approx. 400 ml (13.5 fl oz) to the rim, approx. 250 ml (8.5 fl oz) usable in the well

Humppila Glass began in 1952, founded by three Helander brothers who had all worked as glassblowers at Nuutajärvi, operating out of a converted barn. The company went bankrupt in 1970 and was bought by businessman Rolf Alander, reopening in a purpose-built factory in 1971. Tauno Wirkkala's Kalevala series arrived the following year and became the design that defined the relaunch - it carried Humppila through its strongest decade. Revontulet is one of six models in the range, alongside Ulpukka, Prisma, Tokka, Aurinko and Mesiurut, all in production until 1987.

The shallow profile means it reads as a design object first and a vessel second, which is exactly how these were used in Finnish homes. It works as a fruit dish, a catch-all for keys and coins by the front door, a soap dish on a wide bathroom shelf, or simply as a sculptural note on a mantel where light can find it. Pair it with warm timber, brushed brass, or other clear and smoky glass for a considered mid-century mix.

Condition & Packaging

▫️ Very good vintage condition
▫️ No chips or cracks, light surface marks to the polished well consistent with age and use
▫️ No maker's mark present - normal for this range, which was paper-labelled, and the moulded texture is identification enough
▫️ Carefully packaged with sustainable materials for a safe arrival
▫️ Combined shipping available - significant overages refunded at dispatch

📩 Need more photos or have a question? We're always happy to help - send us a message any time.

The Wirkkala You Can Actually Afford

Tauno Wirkkala was the brother of Tapio Wirkkala, the designer behind Iittala's Kantarelli vase and the Finlandia bottle. That's a claim sellers make constantly, and unusually it's documented. If you already own Iittala and want the same Finnish ice vocabulary without the name premium, this is the direction to look. Clear is the least-collected colourway in the range, which is precisely why it's the one that still behaves like ice instead of just resembling it.

Fruit, leaves and tendrils moulded into a column of white

This tall milk glass vase is moulded with an all-over grapevine relief, the overlapping fruit and leaves wrapping right around a softly tapered cylinder. The opaque white surface carries a gentle satin sheen, so light pools in the hollows between the grapes and catches the raised edges without ever going glassy or bright. It's a piece that works entirely through texture rather than colour, which is exactly what makes it easy to place. At 19 cm it has real presence on a mantelpiece, a hall table or a kitchen bench.

🔸 Key Features

▫️ Maker - Unmarked, in the style of European and American pressed glass production
▫️ Pattern - All-over grapevine relief with clustered fruit, leaves and a curled tendril moulded near the base
▫️ Material - Opaque white milk glass with a soft satin finish
▫️ Form - Gently tapered cylinder on a low moulded foot
▫️ Use - Deep enough for generous garden bunches, leafy branches or dried stems
▫️ Era - Circa 1970s, drawing on a much older decorative tradition
▫️ Detail worth noting - The relief is genuinely deep, not a shallow surface impression, so the pattern reads from across a room

📏 Measurements

📏 Height: 19 cm (7.5 in)
📏 Opening diameter: 9.5 cm (3.7 in)
📏 Base diameter: 7.8 cm (3.1 in)

White Glass and a Very Old Love of Grapes

Grapevines have been decorating vessels since Roman drinking cups, and the motif never really went out of circulation. It resurfaced strongly in nineteenth century pressed glass, then again through the mid twentieth century when milk glass became a fixture of American and European homes. Westmoreland's Paneled Grape was the most famous of these ranges, produced in enormous quantity from the 1940s onward, and its popularity pulled dozens of unmarked variations along in its wake. This vase belongs to that broader family rather than to any single named pattern, with an all-over composition rather than the neat vertical panels of the American originals.

What that means practically is a piece with the look of collectable milk glass and none of the fragility of a matched set. It sits comfortably against dark timber, painted joinery or a strong wall colour, and it is one of the few white objects that still holds its own in a room full of pattern. Left empty on a shelf it reads as sculpture. Filled with white ranunculus or bare magnolia branches, it disappears politely behind the arrangement.

Condition & Packaging

▫️ Good vintage condition
▫️ Some pale staining and light surface marks to the interior, visible in the photos
▫️ Exterior relief is crisp throughout with no chips or cracks
▫️ Carefully packaged with sustainable materials for a safe arrival
▫️ Combined shipping available - significant overages refunded at dispatch

📩 Need more photos or have a question? We're always happy to help - send us a message any time.

Height Without the Colour Commitment

Most vases this tall ask something of the room, either through colour or a shape that dictates the arrangement. This one asks for nothing beyond a flat surface. Unmarked pieces like this rarely command collector prices, which is the quiet advantage - you get depth of moulding that modern white ceramic vases simply do not attempt, at a fraction of what a marked Westmoreland example would cost.