Dish with bouquets and flower sprays c. 1839

This porcelain dish, adorned with bouquets and flower sprays, comes from the Fabriek Dominique Denuelle. Note how the flowers are scattered across the dish, not arranged in a formal pattern, but seemingly random. Flowers, since antiquity, have been potent symbols. In ancient Greece, they were associated with gods and goddesses, emblems of beauty and ephemeral life. Yet here, on this dish, the flowers serve a different purpose. They speak of domesticity, of private pleasure, and of the burgeoning interest in naturalism during the period this dish was likely made. Consider Botticelli's "Primavera," where flowers burst forth, signifying fertility and renewal. The flowers on this dish, divorced from such grand allegories, become intimate. They are not symbols of the divine but rather tokens of everyday life, small joys rendered permanent on porcelain. This shift reflects a change in human consciousness, a turning inward towards the personal and the domestic. The blossoms on this dish whisper of a world becoming increasingly secular, where beauty resides not in the heavens but in one’s own home.