New arrival

Felicette the Astronaut Ceramic Vase

$31.95
Fully Glazed
Dishwasher safe cleaning
30-day return policy

Pickup available at A.N. Deringer c/o Chive Inc

Usually ready in 24 hours

Build Your Effortless Arrangements With These:

Choose a vase as your anchor, then round out the shelf with these for that thrown-together-but-somehow-perfect look.

It was the year of the solar eclipse. We were obsessed, and so was everyone else. So when we finally got around to making a vase we named it after the first cat in space. His name was...Yeah, you guessed it.

Product detail
  • Vase Type: 
  • Material:
  • Glaze finish:
  • Water Resistance: Watertight
  • Year Designed:
Vase Care Instructions

Every ceramic vase in this collection is dishwasher safe on the top rack, making cleanup between arrangements as simple as loading it in with the rest of the dishes. The glazed surface holds up fine to regular washing, so there's no need to hand-wash unless you'd prefer to.

If you're cleaning a piece with painted or sculpted detail, a gentler cycle or a quick hand-wash with warm water and mild soap will help keep the finish looking sharp for longer. Either way, rinse and dry after each use — especially if flower food or cut-stem residue was in the water — so nothing lingers and clouds the glaze.

No special sealants, no periodic maintenance. Wash it, dry it, put flowers back in it.
Flowers that Love this Vase

Quick Guide to Building a Floral Arrangement

  1. Pick your vase first
  2. Start with your anchor flower.
  3. Build in odd numbers.
  4. Add height, then fill.
  5. Greenery does the quiet work.
  6. Cut stems at an angle, underwater if you can.
  7. Step back before you decide it's done.
Canada wide shipping & returns

Shipping 

  • Standard: 5–8 business days, Express 2–3 business days (at checkout)
  • Canada Wide Shipping: from coast to coast — rates at checkout
  • Packaging Ships: in outer box to protect gift box

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Returns

We accept returns within 30 days of delivery on unused hard good items in original packaging. If your piece arrives damaged, contact us within 7 days with a photo and we will replace it at no charge.

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Local pickup & delivery

Delivery: 

  • Delivered by hand across Toronto and the GTA. 
  • Next business day; same-day when you call the shop.
  • Local GTA delivery starts at $14
  • Call for a quote outside of the GTA

Pickup: Order online by 3pm and collect it the same day at:

702 Queen St. W.,
Toronto, ON M6J 1E7
437-777-5021

We are open for in-store shopping

Mon to Thurs: 12pm - 7pm
Fri to Sun: 11am - 7pm

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What people are saying

The first cat in space, sitting on a desk — Felicette

Felicette entered the historical record as the first feline in orbit, a fact that reads as fictitious until confirmed and then still feels criminally underdiscussed given the enormity of what happened. A cat. In orbit. The team felt the correct response was a small ceramic vase, which is not, on its face, a logical response, but neither, honestly, was placing a cat into a launch capsule, so the studio has chosen to consider that particular ledger balanced. She launched. She returned. She has been sitting quietly on a desk in ceramic form ever since, generating fewer demands per week than her flying counterpart once did. The helmet gets the detail work; the shoulders get the glaze pass; the opening for a stem sits tucked into the shoulder behind the helmet section so the front reads as a small portrait rather than as a container. The studio brought her into the current catalog in 2024, sixty-one years after the flight itself, which felt like the right amount of time for a story to settle into an object worth keeping. Not enough people currently talk about Felicette. This ceramic version is a small start. Her actual descendants are not required to be impressed by the tribute.

A (Mostly) Simple Guide to Cutting Your Flowers

So, you’re making an arrangement? Let’s ensure it lives long enough to impress someone—even if it's just you.

  1. Scrub the Scissors: Wash your shears first. Your flowers do not want a side of Dorito dust.
  2. Cut at 45°: Snip stems at an angle. It gives them a straw instead of making them chug from the bottle.
  3. Trim Underwater (Fancy Mode): Cut them submerged to block air bubbles. It’s extra, but they didn’t ask to suffocate.
  4. Ditch Submerged Leaves: Strip anything below the waterline. Unless you are actively going for a swamp aesthetic.
  5. Snip Again if Stale: If they sat out on the counter, trim them again. They need a fresh start (don’t we all?).
  6. Swap the Water: Change it and trim the stems every few days so they don't die immediately.

Voilà! You are now a domestic deity. Go take your Instagram photo before you forget to water them.

Pro Tip: Keep It Short and Sweet!

When it comes to flower stems, shorter is better. Not only do shorter stems look chic in arrangements, but they also help your blooms last longer. Why? Because the shorter the stem, the less distance water has to travel to keep those petals perky. It’s like giving your flowers a shorter commute—less stress, fewer breakdowns.

Perfect Pairs for Any Shelf

Image description

How Chive Retires Pieces — Studio Notes

Retirement policy at the studio has been consistent for over two decades: pieces retired from the current catalog stay retired, and the team here does not reissue what has already been let go, on the reasoning that a ceramic catalog holding onto its own history in perpetuity is a catalog that cannot make sufficient room for a new idea when one arrives. That policy dates to the studio's founding in 2004 and remains under active enforcement today. Felicette earned her current place in the catalog by arriving with a story the studio had never actually told before. She stays as long as the shape holds up and the story continues feeling worth repeating aloud.

About our studio

Inside the Chive Design Studio

Low maintenance, high impact. Let's make home styling look easy.

Frequently asked questions

What should you look for when buying a astronaut cat vase online?

Choose a version where cat body and helmet register as one continuous sculpt rather than a helmet applied to a generic feline blank — every viewing angle should read as intentional. Verify the studio ties the object to a named historical animal. Confirm the material is fired ceramic. Ours meets each mark.

What flowers work best in the Felicette vase from Chive?

Single stems suit Felicette best — a lone tulip, a cornflower with its head slightly bent, a stem of chamomile with tiny closed buds, a calla lily reading as its own small portrait. The piece already carries a small biography, and a bouquet diffuses the biography visually. Flowers with a slight forward nod pair with the helmet tilt. Anything ramrod-upright competes.

What are the Felicette vase's dimensions for shelf or table display?

Felicette runs compact enough for a desk corner, a bathroom shelf, or the ledge above a kitchen counter, at roughly the scale of a small paperback book stood on its end and viewed edge-on. Every dimension figure sits on the product listing itself, not restated in this section, since the studio prefers those numbers stay in one single authoritative location on the page. The scale reads intimate.

Does ceramic keep flower water fresher in the Felicette vase?

Glazed ceramic is opaque, which slows the light-driven bacterial growth that shortens cut-flower life inside clear glass vessels sitting in sunny windows. Water inside Felicette runs cooler on a sun-warmed desk than an equivalent glass version would keep it, and a single stem generally holds a day or two longer between changes. Change water on schedule anyway. Ceramic delays it only.

How often should you change the water in the Felicette vase?

Refresh the interior water on a two-day rhythm for standard cut flowers, moving to a three-day rhythm for woodier stem material, with a fresh diagonal snip taken from the base of each stem when the water goes. Warmer summer rooms shift the routine to daily changes for delicate ranunculus-family blooms. The opening runs quite narrow at the neck. A slim brush handles it.

Can the Felicette vase anchor a dining table or entryway console?

Felicette runs scaled for a desk or a shelf rather than a full dining table, where her proportions get lost against place settings and stemware standing tall around her. On an entryway console she works well as the smaller of two objects, sharing the surface with a taller piece or a shallow bowl beside her. Group her deliberately with a taller partner. Never alone.

Which holds more stems, the Felicette vase or the Frost vase?

Neither piece holds many stems, and neither was designed to do so. Both are single-stem forms — Felicette by biographical intent, Frost by physical opening size — which is why the pair belongs together on a small shelf rather than being pitched as an either-or comparison on paper. Between them a shelf hosts two stems. Two moods.

Who designed the Felicette vase and what inspired its shape?

The Felicette form emerged from the studio's figurative catalog in 2024, brought forward by a designer who had grown up on space history and wanted the ceramic tribute to honour a specific animal by name rather than a generic astronaut cat mascot. The direct visual inspiration was a pre-flight photograph in which Felicette looked entirely unbothered by her circumstances. The vase looks unbothered too.
Behind the Studio

The story behind the Chive astronaut vases

The story of Laika, Félicette, a solar eclipse in New York, and a space bar that ordered a hundred vases a month until it closed.

Read the full story