A jaffa vase inverts the usual arrangement: nothing gets cut, the bulb sits in the neck, and the roots do their work beneath it in plain water where you can watch them. The large is a 4.5-inch bowl standing 5 inches tall, and the medium steps down in both directions for a smaller bulb. As an amaryllis forcing vase it earns its place on a windowsill in January, when nothing outdoors is cooperating and a bulb in water is the only thing in the building making progress. Todd took this up seriously in the seventies, after learning that an average bulb runs about twenty-two years and can split itself as many as six times. As a bulb starter vase, then, it is not a vessel for one week of flowers. Twenty years on, the same bulb is still yours, and the vase has become the least interesting thing in the whole transaction.
