Potato, Potahto, Tomato, Tomahto

As Ira Gershwin wrote and Fred Astaire memorably sang, "You say eether and I say eyether, you say neether and I say nyther, Eether, eyether, neether, nyther." But how do you say V-A-S-E? Whether you rhyme it with C-A-S-E or C-A-U-S-E, you'll find somewhere here at Gotham Gardens who agrees with you. Some of us learned from our mothers (who learned from their mothers who learned from mothers) to pronounce it VAHZ, reflecting, we suspect, a Victorian era penchant for equating British English with culture and class. Some of us just always figured the word was no different than c-a-s-e, b-a-s-e, l-a-c-e, and so on. And some of us are inconsistent, depending on how the mood strikes us. Yet when it comes to the work of Adam Aaronson, the astonishing English glassblower who uses precious metals, or Colin Schleeh, the Canadian artist determined to find out how thin he can shape wood, the word inevitably comes out as VAHZ.