MoMA The Museum of Modern Art

How did forty thousand bees help create this artwork?
To make this vase, artist Tomáš Gabzdil Libertíny constructed vase-shaped beehive scaffolds (removed at the end of the process) and then let nature take its course: a group of bees went to work building a hive, layer by layer, in the same shape as the scaffold. It took one week and approximately forty thousand bees to complete this particular Honeycomb Vase.
The process, which the designer calls “slow prototyping,” poetically brings a natural phenomenon full circle. It starts with flowers, which nourish bees and enable them to produce the vase, and ends with a vessel—that is meant to contain flowers.
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Tomáš Gabzdil Libertíny. “The Honeycomb Vase ‘Made by Bees" (Prototype).’” 2006. Gift of The Aaron and Betty Lee Stern Foundation. © 2026 Tomáš Gabzdil Libertíny.

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