Verlang Cocktail Table

Vincent van Gogh made four still life paintings of sunflowers during the summer of 1887. The one at The Met is among two smaller canvases once owned by fellow artist of the era Paul Gauguin. He hung the two paintings his friend had created above the bed in his Paris apartment before later selling them to help finance a South Seas voyage.

The Verlang Cocktail Table takes the form of a sunflower with its metal base bent upward and inward, while the table’s textured brass interior seems to glow when illuminated from above. To Hershberger, the varied interior of the piece represents all the days of our lives and our constant quest to better ourselves and our faith.

“It’s a clear look through, into the days of our life, and I think it’s just a great illustration of that,” Hershberger says. “In the end, it probably won’t be perfect, but it’s the challenge, it’s the moving forward, it’s the stretch, it’s the keep going, that we still are responsible for.”