Vier lijsten met Japanse kweepeer, kwetsen en klaprozen before 1897

Here are four lists with Japanese quince, plums, and poppies, made by an anonymous artist. The choice of flora is striking. Quince, plums, and poppies each carry complex symbolic weight within different cultural traditions. Quince is associated with love and marriage, plums often represent perseverance and hope, and poppies can symbolize sleep, peace, or even death. How are we to understand these symbols? It's tempting to see the arrangement of these botanical elements as a form of visual poetry, each bloom and branch contributing to a larger meditation on life, death, and the cyclical nature of existence. The identities we construct for ourselves are often pieced together from fragments of memory, experience, and cultural inheritance. The anonymous nature of the artist invites us to reflect on the countless untold stories of those who have shaped our understanding of the world. Their silence becomes a space for us to project our own interpretations, to find personal resonance within the delicate balance of these botanical studies.