Asymmetrical
Objects and designs whose parts do not mirror one another, held in balance by eye rather than by a central axis.
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An asymmetrical object refuses the mirror image: a vessel with a handle on one side only, a lamp whose arm swings off-centre, a chair with one arm higher than the other. Good examples still feel settled, because mass, weight and empty space are balanced by judgement rather than by measurement.
Japanese ceramics prized this quality long before modern design did. Bowls made for the tea ceremony from the late 16th century were often deliberately uneven, with irregular rims and lopsided walls, and potters working in Japan and abroad keep that sensibility alive in stoneware today. In the mid-20th century designers made asymmetry a sign of relaxed modernity: Greta Magnusson Grossman's Grasshopper floor lamp (1947) angles its conical shade away from a slender tripod, and free-form tables and vases of the 1950s drift off any central line.
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