Folk Stories - The Tulip

One of the most fascinating things for me when it comes to my work is searching for the symbolic meaning of the motifs I use in my designs.

Greek folk art like many other folk traditions doesn't have a centralised way of learning it. It requires a lot of personal work and exploration, reaching out to experts and looking through published research and bibliography.

Especially when it comes to the symbolic meaning of motifs, the information is really scattered and very difficult to come across.

When I find these little nuggets of gold, I get such a buzz! Not just because of how tricky it is to find them, but also because they always come with very interesting little stories.

The Tulip

So, today I will share with you a story behind the tulip motif.

It all started when I was researching the above piece as it includes a very impressive tulip in the middle of it.

Apart from Greece, the motif of the tulip is very widely used in many Middle Eastern folk art traditions. But, what was very confusing to me at the time was the way the tulip was drawn.

In my opinion it looked nothing like the flower I know.

The tulip is a flower with full and round petals, however in Greek folk art it is depicted as this very pointy bloom and I just couldn't understand why...

It turns out that the tulip flower originated from the Middle East and in its original form it had pointy petals.

In fact, the pointier the petals, the more expensive the flower!

However, due to colonization the flower was migrated to Europe, where through cross pollination with local flowers the petals lost their little points and became more round.

What I find fascinating though is that folk art has preserved this little story and every time I look at a tulip in folk art now it acts as a reminder that even small things can hold a lot of history in them.

This story was part of a Folk Art newsletter series. If you like stories like that make sure you join my newsletter here.