Billionaires in Space (Series)
2022-2023
In the Gilded Age, massive Imperial Vases were commonly gifted from one robber-baron to another; drawing rooms would be stuffed with these nearly useless ceramic behemoths. The imperial vases in the Billionaires in Space series each commemorate a trip to space undertaken by a billionaire in 2020: Elon Musk (Space X), Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin), Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic) and Jared Issacman (Polaris). Like the billionaires’ bespoke rockets, each vase is tall, sleek and phallic, and decorated with symbols and materials specific to that billionaire.
Imperial vases are the perfect objects of consumerism: they’re large, expensive, extremely delicate and have almost no function. Historically, they were sent as tribute gifts from far-flung subjects to Chinese emperors. In the Industrial Age, robber-barrons would commission imperial vases with painted with idealized pastoral scenes from sooty factories, for their “Titan of Industry” friends.
