Acanthus Blossoms Card

Photography by Minerva Bloom. Two stalks of Acanthus blossoms (also called Bear's Breech). The Acanthus has been a symbol for quality, longevity, and creativity. It's amazing how much history a simple plant and blossom can have, just take a look: The Acanthus, a native flower of the Mediterranean is a plant that has inspired artists and architects for millennia. The acanthus appears for the first time in the arts in ancient Greece, where it was chosen for decorative purposes owing to the beauty of its leaves and its proliferation across the Greek islands. It became more fanciful with the ages as in Victorian England with its symbolic meaning in the language of flowers as "art" or "artistic". But it was around the 4th Century B.C that the Acanthus became tightly integrated with architecture and specifically, the Corinthian order. The Corinthian order was said to have been invented by the poet and architect Callimachus (c. 305 - c. 240 BC), who was inspired by the sight of a basket that had been left on the grave of a young girl. A few of her effects were in it, and a square tile was placed over the basket, to protect them from the weather. An acanthus plant had grown through the woven basket, mixing its spiny, deeply cut leaves with the weave of the basket. Seeing this led him to adapt the Doric and Ionic columns by making the columns slimmer, more elegant, and square cornered, with acanthus leaves curling up to touch the capital (representing the tile) at the top.