Willy Guhl Cone Planter

A Willy Guhl planter in the cone form, a wide, low bowl on thin iron legs, with bright green moss spreading across the pale exterior from a long life outdoors. The shell is pale ash and sun-bleached cream, shifting into deep gray shadow inside the basin. The surface is gritty and bone-dry, breaking into rough, jagged patches along the thin rim. The legs carry a coat of rust.

It stands 15 inches high and measures 47 inches across the rim. It is an original mid-century Swiss Eternit piece; the moss can be left to grow or brushed off, as you prefer, and the rim is as it came to us.

In the manner Guhl intended, it works as a quiet structural element in a modern garden: at the edge of a wide stone patio to frame a view, inside a glass-walled atrium, or among wild grasses where the geometry stands out against the stems; hand-troweled plaster, reclaimed timber and steel all suit it. The Willy Guhl planter is in our yard in Marina Del Rey; see it by appointment, or we will send photographs and a price.