The timeless quality of Second Vase is characteristic of the work of Howard Ben Tré. It looks like an ancient and mysterious ritual object, yet it is cast in industrial-grade glass, which places it in our technological age. The glass is both translucent and reflective, which allows the work to respond to its environment. Second Vase is a masterpiece of restraint-the rough glass and its imperfections countered by the sculpture's ideal proportions, the interior of its neck embellished with gold leaf. It belongs to a series based upon vessel forms. Ben Tré has said of the works of this series that "there are always two cavities or hollows which never connect. This separation speaks to me of the disconnect that exists between the sexual, spiritual, and intellectual aspects of ourselves."

Ben Tré's sculptures begin as gestural drawings, which he develops into full-scale models made of cardboard and polystyrene. The casting process, which involves repeatedly heating and cooling the glass within a sand-and-resin mold, can take two months. The works are finished in Ben Tré's Pawtucket, Rhode Island, studio, where they may be enriched with materials such as bronze powder or gold leaf.

Second Vase is part of the Marilyn and Eugene Glick Collection of contemporary studio glass, one of the nation's most extensive, which includes works by many leading American and European artists.

He is engaged in inventing the forms of an imagined civilization, which has discovered how to mold glass.
-Critic Arthur Danto, 1999