Walk into a riad in Marrakech or a courtyard house in the Draa Valley and you'll often find a Tamegroute vase somewhere — on a low table, in a nook, holding a single branch of eucalyptus or nothing at all. The shape does the work. Unlike a lot of decorative ceramics, Moroccan vases are meant to be handled and used, not just admired, which is part of why they've become a staple in UK interiors looking for texture that isn't mass-produced.
If you're shopping for one for the first time, the choices can be confusing: green glaze or half-glazed terracotta, tall vase or squat planter, purely decorative piece or something that needs to actually hold soil and drainage. Here's how to think about it.
Where the glaze comes from
Most vases in this style come from Tamegroute, a village in the Draa Valley in southern Morocco with a long-established pottery tradition. The signature green glaze is made from local minerals, including copper and manganese oxides, and pieces are fired in wood-burning kilns. Because the glaze is applied and fired by hand, no two pieces come out quite the same — you'll see pooling, subtle colour shifts from olive to deep bottle-green, and small variations in coverage. That isn't a flaw to look past; it's the reason these pieces have a character a factory vase won't.
Not everything in this style is fully glazed. You'll also find half-glazed and plain terracotta planters, where the lower half or base is left in its natural fired clay colour. It's a more understated look that suits plant pots especially well, since the raw terracotta is porous and helps soil breathe.
Vase or planter — know which you're buying
This trips people up more than anything else. A piece described as a “vase” is usually glazed on the inside and designed to hold water and cut flowers or dried stems. A “planter” or “plant pot” is built for potted plants and may or may not have drainage — check the listing, and if there's no drainage hole, plan to keep the plant in its nursery pot and use the ceramic as a decorative outer cover rather than potting directly into it.
Our Handmade Tamegroute Vase in green is a good example of the true vase category: fully glazed, watertight, sized for a statement stem arrangement rather than a full bouquet. For plants, the Tamegroute Planter Pot in green and the Tamegroute Plant Pot in ochre are shaped for houseplants and sit well on a windowsill or console table.
Sizing for the room
Scale is the easiest thing to get wrong when buying ceramics online, since photos rarely show true proportion. A few rules of thumb: small vases (under 20cm) work as a cluster of two or three rather than alone, and suit shelves, bathroom counters or a bedside table. Medium pieces (20–35cm) are the most versatile size for a console table, dining table centrepiece, or floor placement in a smaller room. Anything larger is a floor piece meant to anchor a corner or flank a doorway, and reads best alone rather than grouped.
If you're buying for plants rather than flowers, size the pot to the plant's current root ball rather than where you want it to grow — a piece like the Tamegroute Half-Glazed Planter works for anything from a small palm to a trailing pothos, with the unglazed lower half helping regulate moisture.
Styling notes
Green-glazed Tamegroute pieces read as warm rather than cool, so they sit comfortably against terracotta, rattan, brass and dark wood — the material palette most Moroccan-influenced interiors are already built around. Because the glaze has natural variation, it's worth ordering knowing you'll get a piece with its own individual pooling and shade rather than an exact match to a product photo; that's normal, not a defect.
A single large vase reads as a statement object. A grouping of two or three smaller ones in slightly different heights and shades reads as a considered, collected-over-time shelf. Both are valid approaches — it depends on whether you want the piece to be a focal point or part of a wider vignette.
Care
Glazed pieces can be wiped clean with a damp cloth. If a vase is holding water for cut flowers, empty and rinse it every few days to avoid mineral buildup or odour, the same as you would with any ceramic vase. Unglazed terracotta sections are porous, so keep them away from surfaces that could be marked by moisture transfer, and use a saucer under any planter that's holding a directly-potted plant.
See the full range in our Moroccan vases and planters collection for more shapes, sizes and glaze finishes.