Beautiful botanicals

The beautiful June roses have got me thinking about botanicals. Specifically antique prints. Botanicals have become pretty ubiquitous, I think with good reason. Most people like flowers. And a grouping of botanical prints is pretty and tasteful and pleasing.  Still, I think once you deviate from the pre-packaged fern reproductions form Pottery Barn or Restoration Hardware, there is room to paint with a more individualistic, perhaps dramatic hand. And why buy a mass-produced reproduction when there are plenty of antique prints to choose from online? (try Etsy or Ebay for example, for inexpensive prints). I've been really drawn to the combination of pink and mauve and grey recently. Inspite of the little girl connotations of pink, something about this combination elevates it to a very elegant, serene realm. I especially like the botanicals I've been finding with grey backgrounds. Wouldn't this be a lovely grouping?

I love too, the boldness of the tropical flowers. Just look at the amazing plumage and spots of the orchids, the sun-burst architecture of the Passion Flower, and the dark, sensual petals of the Rhodochiton!

I didn't even work particularly hard to find these images; they are all from Antique Print Boutique, an Etsy shop based in Beallsville, MD.

Top row (1 to r):

1. Oncidium Cucullatum Orchid. 1876.  

2.  Passion flower, 1887.

3. Rhododendron, 1876.

Bottom row:

1. Rhodochiton Volubile, 1838.

2. Louise Odier Rose, 1940.

Stop and smell

On our way to a concert given by the Brooklyn Art Song Society, we stopped to admire these beautiful, fragrant roses.  An interesting counterpoint to the Wolf lieder we heard afterwards, which were quite dramatic and thorny. 

Thank god for Trader Joe's! Picked up this potted Hyacinth when I was in the Upper West Side yesterday, for just $2.99.  In the midst of Polar Vortex number 2 (I think this is the winter word of 2014, at least on the East Coast), I was in desperate need of something that reminded me of the upcoming spring.

I've always been curious of the Victorian flower symbolism, wondered how many people actually were fluent in the "language of flowers", how universal/ubiquitous it's usage actually was.  There was something delicious about it, arcane, perhaps a bit silly/romantic (depending on your perspective), with a dash of subterfuge/spy-novel-mystery. 

It turns out the symbolism of the hyacinth way predates Victorian usage. For you budding etymologists out there, the -nth suffolk denotes a pre-Hellenic origin. In a nutshell, this is a racy gay love triangle. Apollo, the sun god, was the lover of a beautiful boy, Hyacinth. But Zephyr, the West Wind, was also taken with the boy, and jealous that his affections weren't returned. While Apollo and Hyacinth were throwing around a discus, Zephyr changed the course of the wind so the discus struck Hyacinth in the head, killing him. While Apollo was powerless to save his young love, he caused purple hyacinth flowers to  spontaneously grow from blood that soaked the ground. Hyacinth would never completely vanish, and every spring he would be reborn.

Today's cat-cam

Mia greets the Spring.